I'm in the process of making a chargen ruleset as well as house rules for a real street level / beginner runners game:

The design goals are as follows:
- Low starting cash OR high debt
- Low lifestyles
- Not to break magic/mundane balance even more
- above average attributes in spite of low level
- fair amount of skills
- not excessively min-maxed characters
- tie in with the streets life


The runners that originate from this basically have to be a cut above the rest, because else they won't make it. However, they should be just a BIT better than your average thug, bouncer, or ganger.

The generation system must definitely be Karmagen.

I'm going to suggest the following to meet those goals:

300 karma limit
10k nY limit bought via karma
Bonus knowledge skill karma (12x Log+Int)
Bonus contact karma (4xCha); Contact max loyalty 3, max connection 4. Contacts generally use Connection x2 for rolls on behalf of the runners.
Attributes cost 3x
Races cost 1xBP cost, maximum 40.
Skill groups can specialize 1x per skill

150karma for attributes max (unmodified by race), no attribute lower than 2.
No maximums except racial/augmented at chargen; no skill maximum.
Max magic of 3 from normal karma. Max of 2 spells known bought from normal karma.
Everyone should have basic social skills and perception.
Max Edge 4. Edge refreshes before every run, and for every critical succes (4 over threshold) 1 point is regained, even when edge was expended to make the test.

Every PC must have some sort of valuable ties to family or friends, essentially gaining either the Dependants quality (for the usual karma) or getting a free contact of parents, siblings, or best friends of NO MECHANICAL value. Essentially these are Loyalty 5, Connection 1 contacts, who may not be called upon for help. Rather, expect them to call for your help.

More money can be gained by borrowing: You can take the In debt quality without gaining karma points, for basically lots of nuyen. The interest rate is 120% per year, so 10% per month. Interest is added to lifestyle cost each month. You may repay portions of credit each months, limited to 10% of the total amount per month. You do NOT need to pay karma. The following month interest is then recalculated. If you hit a dry spell the loan shark will come for you and bust your balls. They generally want to keep you earning, though, so it is possible he will settle for a free job in exchange for waiving one month's interest, or a part of it. It should be appropriately difficult to simply get rid of the loan shark, but unlike the In-Debt quality, this IS a possibility. Noone will ever lend you money, again, though. Also, likely as not, unless you wipe out the entire outfit, someone will take up the loan shark's position and come for the debt again. And then they won't be pulling punches. AND they will target your contacts, especially family, friends, dependants.

Awakened may buy more magic score and spells by buying more karma with the debt money.

You may buy decrepid gear at half price. Per piece of such gear involved in any roll the glitch limit is lowered by 1. Generally a basic glitch on equipment like this will mean it breaks down, either reducing its rating by 1, give you a DP penalty of 1 point for future tests with that equipment, or simply not function (for simple or all-or-nothing items), until repaired.

ANY method of gaining wealth is game, as long as it's reasonably fun. Boosting cars for weeks isn't. Career criminals can take criminal day jobs, which don't pay better.

Also, since this is the harsh world of the streets, any kind of displayed affluence WILL generate envy. Buying one hugely expensive piece of gear with all your debt might put you at a big advantage, but people will try to take it from you - often.

***

How does this all sound? Any good suggestions to add stuff?

Well... I will say it...

At 150 Karma for Attributes, I do not think you are going to get even average stats. Human with 3's in everything (8 Stats) costs 25 per stat, which makes 200 Karma, not 150. So you are going to get BELOW average Stats for all characters, for almost all stats. Not enough points. 300 points in Karma Gen is just not enough points.

well, he stated Karma*3 for Stats - but 300 Karma is really low.

If you are expecting a lot of rolls in the low dice pool region I would suggest changing the glitch system. (this might not be an issue, I hear street level and think low dice pools) I'm running a low street level game right now and changed the glitch system to be a glitch when you roll more 1's than successes. It eliminates that irritating bouncing around of your chance for a glitch as you increase dice pools. It also keeps glitches around as a possibility much longer (which I think fits with the crappy equipment, living on the edge, feel of a street level game) and makes qualities like gremlins and cursed more playable (and less meaningless at high dice pools). My players also found it more intuitive. Of course, this means that overall the chance of glitches increases in your game. Some players will be upset that glitches will occur on about 1/6 rolls in the 1-7 range rather than 1/9 like the normal system. There is still the slight increase in glitch chance as you go from 1-2, but nothings perfect.

Normal Chance of glitch-
DP 1- 16.7%
DP 2- 30.6%
DP 3- 7.4%
DP 4- 13.2%
DP 5- 3.5%
DP 6- 6.2%
DP 7- 0.6%

Alternate Chance of glitch-
DP 1- 16.7%
DP 2- 19.4%
DP 3- 19.9%
DP 4- 19.7%
DP 5- 19.2%
DP 6- 18.6%
DP 7- 9.6%

300 karma isn't just low, it's crippling. The standard allowance is 750; remember that Build Points translate to karma on a roughly 1:2 basis, not 1:1.

Starting cash is hardly ever a significant amount anyway, unless the character buys a Luxury lifestyle.

I think there's a much simpler way to meet your goals: standard 750-point karmagen; all lifestyles above Low disallowed. Ten thousand nuyen goes FAST, especially for gear-intensive archetypes like street samurai and hackers. Magicians can get away with less gear, but 10k is low even for them.

My philosophy regarding house rules is that less is more.

easiest way to make street level characters is to tell the players "go make street level characters".
a few restrictions on availability (~8 ), max magic (~3) and max cash (~30k) are ok. But I wouldn't drop total BP/karma too much. 370 BP and 650 karma are very very reasonable. If a players doesn't build a street level character, he has to try again.

I think that 300 karma could work, as long as you're willing to accept that most people are going to have at most 8-9 in their specialties and that it's going to be a very different game. Though, you probably won't see a lot of above average attributes.

with 3x for attributes, it's enough to have (if you start human)-
2 attributes at 4, 3 in every other attribute including edge
3 skills at 4, 6 skills at 3
10 k-nuyen
net 0 qualities

3 and below in attributes, and for the first 2 ranks in skills: karma >= BP.

Most players tend to balance qualities costs anyway (from what I've seen), so the change in value doesn't really matter much. If the point is to start with a lot of pretty mundane, non-cybered characters it works okay.

It's 15 karma to get 3 in an attribute (in this system) and 42 karma to get 5, so the first 300 karma is worth more about as much as the last 450 karma in terms of adding to your dice pools. Really the top level skills and attributes are where you get hurt, but I don't think that's what he wants in the game anyway.

Except that it is not x3 for Stats in SR4A, it is x5. Which is crippling (Literally) with only 300 Karma to spend.

I use BP, but for the campaign I'm running right now I started everyone at 350 BP, Availability 8 ristrictions, and some edges and flaw restrictions because of the nature of the campaign.

Resulting characters were basically two physads, 1 full mage and a technomancer. Later a mage joined the group as well as a smuggler--but since the game is running like 6 sessions in I jutst let the new characters be base 400 BP. BTW the game is intended to be a magic heavy game in a toxic zone (LA's slightly submerged sections).

I did not impose an aditional limits on attributes since 200 would be most of their points, primary skills were 3's with a few 4's, and I limited tech to 50,000 nuyen. Not suprisingly, no one made a Street Sam or rigger (the technomancer is doing a good job of it right now though).

They started off with the community they are part of as a group contact, this contact is also a dependent quality (there are kids), and home ground. As to the magic alchera fountain in the middle and the the viel/men of the woods protecting it I did say this game is heavy magic.

Yes, normally this is true. Except, OP specifically said x3, probably as a way to encourage higher attributes compared to skills. I did make a note of it, when I said (in this system). I was referring to his using x3 rather than x5. Also, Nil_FisK_Urd already pointed out to you that the he was using x3 for these house rules.

Wow... Completely missed the stat ruling used in the OP, and did not see Nil_Fisk_Urd's actual post. So, I stand Corrected.

This, with the added caveat that the GM needs to spell out, in detail, exactly what his vision of a "street-level character" is.

I chose 300 specifically, because I want to add the debt system. Essentially you are getting a lot more, since your debt is essentially unlimited, well, within reason. But you could get another 40 karma worth of cash via the debt. I also wanted characters to spefically need a reason to go easy on the good qualities to maybe end up with a net gain. Also, I'm using all the bonus karma optional rules which basically means you end up with yet another 80-90 karma.

What I want is character which are basically average joes, for instance, ex-security guards, ex bouncers, ex smallish time criminals, low-life hackers, ex wage slaves, etc. , who aspire to something higher, and will do anything to get there. So this is where the 10k nuyen come in: Basically how much would an average joe like that have been able to afford just from his regular job? Without buying stuff on credit? 10K may be on the low end, but think about how much you could afford with ONLY a low-paying job, and no loans. And this isn't lifestyle, lifestyle can be paid for with a day job. Maybe I should say people get a low lifestyle for free during chargen. Do YOU have 10k dollars worth of runner-worthy gear lying around? And I don't mean skate boards and camping gear. Having little money every month means you can't invest big. So really, the cash limit is the kicker for me.

But then magic becomes a problem, unless I limit that, too. So... basically a strict karma limit, and forcing mages to also take debts seems to be a fair solution. Am I wrong?


House rules that are spelled out on paper are just like another supplement with optional rules. Obviously the players will have to want to play something like this.



I disagree, because simply imposing limits skews the balance - some things are hurt more than others. Actually these 300 in karma can end up with more total points in attributes and overall more skills than some regular 400BP builds. In fact, I'm willing to say that with these rules it is easier to make playable characters with higher dice pools in more areas than with regular 400BP. Because BP really force you to min-max, and absolutely punish broadening out.


This is my observation also: What happens is that opportunity cost for raising single attributes or skills disproportionately high becomes greater.

8-9 in a specialty skills (disregarding shooting, and some aspects of hacking, which easily get higher) is perfectly fine, because I'm setting the baseline at 6 dice. In my current game, even relative mooks shoot 12 dice easily, or else the game is boring. And these mooks are built with probably similar amounts of points. It is entirely possible to build a street-sam with this: A 4 in agi, add muscle replacement 2, a 4 skill with specialty + smartlink makes 14 dice. Take a cheap automatic, you're set. Soak will be significantly lower, though, than normal. And having little karma just make Orks even better yet. Well, let them shine in this edition.

The other thing is, I really want people to find the cheaper cyberware attactive for a change. When cash is a real issue, but you still really need to get ahead, then you take the small advantages, which cost little money but high essence. With the added caveat that you need to take dangerous runs to scrape in enough cash to pay your debts, you really need to get the most bang for your buck. Maybe I'm seeing this the wrong way, maybe these rules would produce characters that are completely different than what I believe. My idea is to make rules that automatically make characters fit the niche that I want to put them in. Taking a 750 karma character and simply limiting his lifestyle to low doesn't create a street level character.

There are still things which are disproportionately good: The cyberarm of awesome will still rule, probably more now. Cyberdiabetes will still rule. Probably adepts will be fairly good, too, because they can get quite a few cheap dice. Mages I don't know. They can roll reasonably well to cast or summon, but their drain dice will suffer, and their spell selection will be narrow.

I realize I have made no rules for TMs. I really don't know shit about them, I'm finding it hard to put them in perspective. I also forgot a few other things. Which optional rules are available at chargen, etc. This is just a general outline. I'll go over it again tomorrow.

I like the concept a lot. I'm running a street level campaign. (slightly different concept, but very similar) Started at 300 BP, but everyone wrote their back stories first and I picked an NPC stat block (from the contacts stats, though I think you could also use grunts) that was close to what they described. They started from there and rounded it up to 300 BP. With a few exceptions, such as adjusting the taxi driver to be more of a delivery truck driver which I worked out with the players.

It has worked pretty well so far. Gear was pretty limited and I think the most anyone started with was 40,000 nuyen mostly tied up in vehicles and commlinks. Your players might be different, but I think most of mine decided that they'd rather invest their limited points into skills and attributes and that cyber and gear will come later in the game. They also mostly avoided combat skills because the NPC stats didn't start with many and it didn't fit with most of their character concepts. It's been very awesome to see them think twice about tangling with street thugs, because they could get owned and to see them picking up an Ares Predator as a big piece of equipment.

Good luck with this, I'd love to hear about it if you ever get a game going.

My regular Shadowrun GM started his game at 600 karma, which in retrospect I think was a really smart choice. Basically, it's the interim between "you are completely useless dirt gangers" and "you are already more powerful than basically any individual NPC you care to interact with." The characters all started in fairly dire straights, which was more than enough to get them hooked into Shadowrunning (an Awakened serial killer, a fugitive terrorist technomancer, a street sammy tossed in a dumpster with no cash and his mind erased, and a...Japanese...ninja... [one player didn't get the memo]), but at the same time, we had just enough karma to be effectual, to be special, and to feel like player characters without feeling like snowflakes (again, ninja excepted).

I'm generally of the belief that the 750 karma suggested in karmagen is supposed to apply to characters who are professional runners and run for a living already. For instance, when I retired my first character from this campaign and built a second at 750 karma, I was able to build a character who was simultaneously a competent street sammy, hacker, and rigger, with a super-modded hacking suite, car, and gun setup. That level of competence is really only appropriate for people with considerable experience already under their belts. Hell, even in my own game, which had the characters starting out as professionals in fields outside of running, I had the players build off of 700 karma.

That said, both my GM and I use house-rules that give characters a few extra contacts and knowledge skills. It's bloody impossible to incentivise your players to pick up knowledges and contacts without giving them a taste first, because active skills, ware, and specialized equipment carry a more immediate benefit and thus look shinier.

You say something about how Awakened can buy more spells/magic with In Debt but it isn't clear how that works to me. Can you explain? I'm not sure how to evaluate that.

You say 150 karma for attributes, unmodified by metatype. Which version are you using for that? Are you doing metatypes cost karma=bp? Are you doing metatypes are free?

Well... you take out the debt, then buy karma at the chargen going rate of 2500/karma. Then you can use that to raise magic stuff.

I think I said metatypes cost 1xBP, with a max of 40 points allowed. So no free spirits and AIs, but pixies and stuff are still possible.

I'm also using the variant - or it may be the RAW, I don't know right now - that racial mods are always added on after buying - and this stays during play. So cost is not increased for racial mods, it is rather very much decreased if you buy to the identical level. Which is why it's ok to not increase the allowable karma by race.

It's a houserule - you should probably specify that somewhere. Does that apply to racial penalties? How does that work? Do Trolls have to pay 15 (3x2+3x3) to get Agility 2?

great idea!

You got me: Actually it's not always a mod. I generally use DK's spreadsheet, which doesn't do penalties correctly, I believe. This is the most favourable and the cheapest way of buying attributes. I'm going to have to spell that out somewhere, good call.

I'll see if I can give you a more detailed analysis in a bit, but I think the result you are going to end up with is Shadowrun: where Troll meets Magic.

Do you allow people to trade 2500 nuyen for a karma after gameplay starts? Or is this a chargen-only thing?

You have rules for decrepit gear. Do you allow secondhand cyberware as well per the normal rules for it?

Yes, and yes. Also, things like the house rules for used vehicles haven't been removed.

Well, in my current group we do it, and so far problems have not happened. However, people have cautioned me. Our mage bought quite a bit of karma, as was expected. I think my normal karma rewards are still on the low side, especially considering how slowly this group progresses. On the other hand, the only reason these people have so much money lying around is because they generally don't use the time in between sessions to buy more gear.

Cash for karma and vice versa are things I like very much, but many people believe it will upset the game.

The problems with magic I don't see, unless I forgot to write some things down. I understand that resistance to magic will probably be low, since raising WP won't be high on a lot of people's priorities, given the scarcity of karma.

I think where you'll see a problem is as follows. The limited gear hurts mundanes very, very badly. The limited magic does hurt magicians...but they can still get good drain stats and OK skills, so it's not nearly as bad. It might be simpler to determine this by making a quick mock-up character or two.

However, the "varying amount of debt" thing kind of adds a monkey wrench. In theory, as debt -> infinity, mundanes start pulling out of the suck heap. But I think it's well past the point of unamanageably huge debt. Like, if you assume the mage is taking 100 karma and the mundane is taking 250000 nuyen from debt, then you probably have parity or maybe even an advantage for the mundane...but that's a 25000 nuyen per month payment just to stay afloat, which is totally unreasonable (and will see both characters falling so far behind everyone else very fast).

Can you suggest what you think is a reasonable amount of debt to compare characters at? I am sure mages are better at 0 debt. Probably mages remain significantly better until you start hitting ginormous debt amounts, but an example is worth a thousand theoryruns.

The other thing you might see, incidentally, is augmented awakened who take 2 magic with plans to go add in 1 essence of 'ware -> raise magic back to 2 -> repeat, which is very efficient in the long run but will start them off weak.

I'm doing that at present. The limited gear hurts mundanes insofar as expensive bioware is out of reach, and some setups for equipment heavy character likely as not won't work. The van rigger, for instance, since his toys will be too expensive. You can mourn that, but IMHO any game where a character has hundreds of thousands in equip simply cannot be street level. In my chargen excercises I am currently concentrating on mundanes, and they turn out... sort of ok, not too bad, considering my design goals.

I should put something in that software piracy is possible at chargen. Maybe I should also make skillsofts lower in price again - 10k is too much, 1k is too low, but I'm thinking 10k for a rating 4 skill should be viable, which puts us at 2.5k per rating. That's about SR3 levels. Now you can actually build a viable MBWII character, for instance, by using a Used standard MBWII and buying skillsofts later. This is more efficient than wired reflexes, I believe, since the MBW is light on the essence.

Now the magic, well, you may be right that a mage can buy enough skills and also magic to reasonable amount. Maybe my charop skills aren't enough to see how this can be that much worse. Mages can ALWAYS be stunbolt cannons. There is nothing that can be done about that, IMHO. They will definitely fail in the initiative and initiative passes field, where sustaining foci are expensive, ware is too expensive, and binding F8 spirits of man is out, too. Path adepts I'm seeing as ending up quite good. They can end up the fastest kids on the block with just 2 magic, which leaves 1 point for ware when buying 3 magic. Simply by going more often than the rest they might compensate for having a few dice less than the CAoA sammie.

I'll have to build a mage to check what you can get out of the system as is.


Paying 25000 every month is clearly too much, and any player should be able to see it. At that point the loan-shark will have you working around the clock just to pay the interest, and you will never lose the debt unless it's a monty haul campaign.

The reality check maximum is probably around 100K in debt. That still probably means you won't be spending a lot on equip until the debt is worked off. But then again, at street level, I'm seeing looting and using used stuff to be a very viable possibility. So I think that still fits my design.

Do you think the variable debt idea will create too many problems with balancing the group? I'm not sure. Debt is a PowerNow! mechanic. Not taking any would leave you with an 6-10 dice low equip mundane crapper, who might eventually - if he survives - surpass the guy with the debt because that guy has to effectively pay so much more for his stuff he got at chargen.
I should make a guy completely without debt to see what I can do with that. Maybe I should also write something in that I do expect everyone to have a varied skill set, so the debt-free guy can't get away with just taking two skills and throwing all this karma into attributes. Maybe I should also try to make a mechanic that actually punishes the guy who is just a tag-along, because he is waiting on become more useful, later. Basically if a guy can't contribute, he gets less money. Or maybe I should just encourage this kind of behaviour within the group? It might cause problems, though, between the players. If a guy turns up with an office slave with no relevant skills whatsoever and only the most basic gear, but the group has to carry him along, because it's a game. I don't like vetoing, but I would have to make it clear that the other players are completely within their rights to withhold most of the payouts from him.

OR maybe I should just mandate a 100k nuyen debt? That way everyone is back on the same page. I don't much like doing that, though.


That is definitely a possibility, although I don't see them lowering their magic by more than 2 points, since maximum magic will stay limited. I'm not really that concerned about that, I must say.

I would probably just pick a fixed debt amount. I'm going to work with 100k here in any case, because I think that this is a separate issue and depends more on how much your group is OK with intraparty conflict.

I do agree you can make Adepts work. I'm not totally sure how they compare; that would also be something to look into. Depending on how you rule Heightened Concentration in particular and Mystic Adepts in general work, they might be the real ultimate winners.

Alright, let me do a quick workup of a pixie magician. Looking at how the houserules interact, I think pixies win quite hard. Trolls are probably the winners for physical combat.

35k Pixie
15k B3
0k A3
27k R6
6k S2
0k C3
60k I7
42k W7
(exactly 150k on attributes)
15k Mag3
6k E2
(21k)
Qualities
-70k of negative qualities
30k Magician
10k Mentor Spirit
(-30k)
Spells
10k 2 spells
Skills
46k Spellcasting 6 (+spec)
24k Summoning 4 (+spec)
8k Counterspelling 2
10k Infiltration 2 (+spec=Urban)
6k Perception 2 (+spec=Visual)
8k Assensing 2
10k Influence 1
(112k total)

Equipment (2k)
Softweave FF (2560Y), Camo Vest (600)+Kevlar Threading (100) + Hard Hat (75) (accounting for 50% markup) is 3335 for 11/7 armor. Assume another 1665 of gear to cover minimal other crap.

Now add in 40 karma from debt that can go to magic and spells. That's Magic 3 and 10 spells, or Magic 4 and 7 spells, or Magic 5 and 4 spells. I'm going to go with the last option.

Details: Rastafarian tradition, Dark Goddess mentor, spell selection Stunbolt, Stunball, Increase Reflexes, Mind Probe.

(Magic 4 and 7 spells is also totally defensible, and would be similar but pick up a single target elemental damage spell and another 2 general-use utility spells, probably Heal and Physical Mask.)

Summing it up, that's Magic 5, with pools of 11 (15) for spellcasting (combat), 9 (11) for Summoning (Man), and 14 dice to soak drain, with a base initiative of 13. This character can easily enough keep a Man spirit around with Innate Spell (Increase Reflexes) for Initiative 16 and 4 IPs - and on top of that, the man spirit can possess something and still participate in combat. End result? Just blatantly better at fighting than a cut-rate Street Samurai with only 100kY in 'ware. And comes with a spirit that is also better at fighting than the cut-rate samurai. Oh, and he doesn't need to start throwing out and replacing 'ware to advance later on like the street samurai does.

While being better at fighting than a street samurai, the utility knife that is spirit summoning brings a ton of useful things to the table: Concealment, Search, Control Weather, Influence, various silly possession tricks. Oh, and this is a pixie, so he's also stealthier than anyone else - the Force 5 spirit that he can summon with 0 drain on average, plus his own ability, means -10 to spot him. Yeah. Also, Mind Probe.

Quick note: due to granularity, only actually spends 37/40 debt karma.

While I'll be taking a more detailed look soon, I do have two observations.

One is that summoning is really good. With magic 3, summoning 3, specialization, and a mentor spirit, you have about a 66% chance of summoning a force 6 spirit. You'll take likely take 2-4 drain if your drain resist is only 6-8, but that's livable. In a normal game, a force 6 spirit is respectable. In a low-powered game like this, it'll be quite powerful.

The other thing is why the cap of the amount of how much you can pay back per month? I've never heard of a loan shark refusing extra payment before in fiction or real life. Since loan sharks have to worry about defaulting since breaking someone's legs actually doesn't get them cash directly, I don't see them refusing extra money. I would think they'll try to upsell the runners on a bigger loan especially now since both sides have had a good experience with the other.

It also encourages PCs to do risky high payout things since they can just pay off the loans in total if the plan works. Otherwise they'll have to sit on the payout for almost a year. Also the interest rate is about 313.8% per year at 10% per month. I guess you might be trying to abstract out the exact amounts the PCs are in debt in which case all my debt comments don't really apply. But I'm not sure what you get out the abstractions versus the real numbers.

As for mages and IPs, they can take drugs just as well as anyone else, which a ton of people are likely going to do. Since they want a high willpower anyways, they can handle their Cram better than the Street Sam.

I would suggest:
Up the karma to 325.
Up the cash limit to 50kY
Remove the ability to get extra magic/spells.
Up the spells limit from 2 to 5.
Just start everyone with some amount of debt.
Unaugmented adepts suck eggs in this ruleset, but that's inherited from the rules in general and darn hard to fix. At least augmented adepts are probably alright. Mystic adepts exist in a quantum state of sucking/not sucking depending on exactly how they work in your game.

Also, both my suggested changes and your current rules set bone Technomancers very very hard. I'm not sure if you care or not, but if the answer is no I would probably just say "no technomancers."

Please spell out, in detail, exactly what constitutes "street level" for you.

Street level is a guy who is just rising from the streets, essentially a normal socially low, that is, below middle class, guy who is trying to grow. Replace guy with whatever gender you please. A game full of inept spoiled brats isn't street level. A game full of hyper specialists with low lifestyles isn't street level. The epitome of street level is several aspects: You are NOT a trained (or experienced) professional in the field of shadowrunning. That means to me, basically I should be able to take any average NPC grunt stat block and add a bit of individuality, and just a bit more - even if it's just not having to rely on team edge. You do NOT have tons of cash invested in yourself and your abilities, because up to now you've been doing low-paying jobs. You ARE a guy with compromised morals who will do anything to get ahead. That's why - for this game - characters are encouraged to take out those loans: Without them, they'll be stuck doing their low-paid jobs. MAYBE that's not the case. I've played around and found Trolls excel at getting by without the loan. At least, a troll could take out a very small loan that is paid back quickly.

As UmaroVI has excellently demonstrated, this can still result in pretty ugly characters. I'm going to have to say here: If it takes a Pixie mage to show that a system is broken, then that proves very little, because the pixie mage is broken in every other system, too, unless you remove cash spending limits entirely. And then it just boils down to the broken-ness of magic in SR.

My gut response is at this point rather to disallow sapient critters than shift the numbers. I'm still quite sure that a cash limit must be in place. How many of you, without knowing what kind of jobs you have, have saved up 50000$ they could invest in becoming professionaly criminals? If you have a well paying job, of course, you might have that. But then why become a criminal in the first place?

Street level is by definition below middle class, and middle class might have that amount of cash, but they have little motivation other than, perhaps, losing their jobs or boredom.

@UmaroVI: I'm sorry if I may sound like I don't value your input. I do, and I applaud your efforts. You've proven that my system, as it is, is breakable. The question is how much of this is based on the pixie, and how much on the numbers I want to put in place? Can your mage be made from a human, or an ork, or another race? I'm going to take your numbers tomorrow or next week and run them through some other races and see. A posession mage always looks nasty on paper. It might work without taking a pixie.

@the guy who suggested not limiting paying back the loan: YES, I've though about that. It's an open point in my mind. I tend to think that giving credit is always a double-edged sword: you want the guy paying interest as long as possible, and you also want to definitely get all your money back. If he pays back his loan, your only way of staying in business is offering him another one. Which is why you want him to keep earning, but not paying back the loan. So you don't break his kneecaps, you break his wife's, or mother's, or son's, or whoever he doesn't want hurt.

It's not going to be quite as bad without pixie - part of the problem is actually the loopy effects of karmagen with cheap characteristics and post-adding bonuses. But, yes, it's not overly dependent on being a pixie.

Dwarves and humans suck. Elves pay a lot for +2 Charisma. Orks pay 20 karma for +3 body (which you care about) and +2 strength (which saves you 6 karma to buy it to the minimum). Trolls pay 40 karma for +4 body, +4 strength, and a cap of 5 on intuition. The extra strength doesn't matter and another body is really not worth 20 karma unless you were going to hardcap it to the limit so that means Ork or Elf.

You could probably roll out effectively as an Ork intuition mage much like the above pixie. You wouldn't be quite as good at the actual magic, but could easily afford solid body and thus plenty of armor and be a lot tougher. The alternative would be an Elf magician who leans hard on self-possession and fights like that, which is also quite good but fairly different. I'm going to do quick writeups of both but I will skim over some details like "exactly what armor do you wear" because those details are annoying and I don't think it really matters.

OK, now that I have a better handle on what you actually want, I think I can suggest a simpler way of getting there. Your "borrow money, then convert to karma" idea is, frankly, ludicrously overcomplicated. There's also the fact that breaking the kneecaps of someone important to someone who shoots people in the face for money is a pretty bad business plan.

600 karma (300 was never a good idea)
Limit gear to Availability 8 or less (no limits on value; remember, a character's gear doesn't necessarily represent stuff that he went out and bought all at once; he might have been assembling his kit for months or years)

I think that'll do it. Remember the KISS principle.

Setup 1: Ork intuition mage

20k Ork
15k B7
6k A2
15k R3
0k S3
6k C2
60k I7
42k W5
(144k on attributes)
15k Mag3
6k E2
(21k)
Qualities
-70k of negative qualities
30k Magician
10k Mentor Spirit
20k Changeling II
Metagenic Enhancement (Intuition)
(-10k)
Spells
10k 2 spells
Skills
46k Spellcasting 6 (+spec)
24k Summoning 4 (+spec)
8k Counterspelling 2
10k Infiltration 2 (+spec=Urban)
6k Perception 1 (+spec=Visual)
8k Assensing 2
10k Influence 1
(112k total)

Equipment (3k)
I'm assuming you can fit proper armor (which will be either 20/15 or 17/18 for this guy, probably the former) in 7500Y.


Now add in 37 karma from debt that can go to magic and spells. Magic 5, four spells, Rastafarian, and Dark Goddess as before. This time, Stunbolt, Stunball, Increase Reflexes, and Increase Reaction, using a Spirit of Man with Innate Spells to keep the buffs up on yourself.

Pools are spellcasting 11 (15 combat), Summoning 9 (11 man), drain resist 12. The spirit of man will be less than awesome with a -4 sustaining penalty, but it isn't useless. When buffed this character will have Initiative 19 (4 IPs).

Comparison with street samurai: is going to be just better. Street samurai with less than 100kY can't touch that. Still brings more utility too, due to lolspirits.

Comparison with pixie: basically gives up a bit of utility (mind probe) and has to devote spirit of man largely to just sustaining buffs, so net loss of offense. 4 more body matters a lot for defense, though, and using Increase Reaction means having a good defense pool and even better Initiative. Probably a net loss but I don't think it's a big one; might even not be a loss depending on how much the extra body and armor matters. If you're mostly going up against gangers with pistols and clubs, then the ability to shrug off small arms fire is huge.

Setup 2: Elf Charisma mage.

30k Elf
15k B3
0k A2
6k R2
6k S2
60k C9
6k I2
42k W5
(135k on attributes)
15k Mag3
27k E4
(42k)
Qualities
-70k of negative qualities
30k Magician
10k Mentor Spirit
20k Changeling II
Metagenic Enhancement (Charisma)
(-10k)
Spells
10k 2 spells
Skills
24k Spellcasting 4 (+spec)
46k Summoning 6 (+spec)
10k Infiltration 2 (+spec=Urban)
6k Perception 1 (+spec=Visual)
4k Assensing 1
(90k total)

Equipment (3k)
Proper armor will be 11/7 or 9/9. May want another 2/2 of easily removable armor like a helmet which can be worn while possessed. Also buy a gun that doesn't suck.

Magic 4 and 7 spells this time. Going for Voodoo and Sun (Health/Guardian). Spells Increase Reflexes, Increase Willpower, Physical Mask, Mind Probe, Heal, Levitate, Stunball

Un-possessed, pools are 8 spellcasting (12 Health), 10 summoning (14 guardian), 14 drain. Buffs himself with Increase Willpower (which has comically low drain) to jack up drain pool, then summons a guardian spirit to possess him. The guardian spirit gets the Increase Reflexes. Run around being better than the street samurai at his job, point and laugh. Not overly subtle, but Physical Mask can largely cover for that when needed.

Compared to street samurai: roflstomps a cut-rate street samurai into the ground when possessed. On average takes no drain from a f9 guardian spirit, but that is pushing it more than is really sensible so let's assume f7 (keeping mind he can call up a bigger one and spend edge when it really matters). He's going to be running around with an all-9's statblock, skill 7, and about 25/25 armor of which 14/14 is hardened. Things only get worse with Channeling when he can start being better than the street samurai at the street samurai's job while also casting spells. Also brings enormously more utility to the party than a street samurai (defaulting to 8 dice of social skills, several useful spells for things besides violence, Task spirits lol, Influence from man spirits, Weather Control, Search, Concealment, etc etc etc.

Compared to other mages: Probably worse at fighting (one really tough possessed dude is less good than a somewhat less tough spellcaster and a second somewhat less tough spellcaster), and needs to be possessed which is something of a weakness, but brings noticeably more utility. Probably a wash on the whole.

You do make most of your money from the interest. However, their biggest problem you have as a loan shark is actually making people pay. That's why you have to keep all those leg breakers around which cost money. Also, if the shadowrunner dies, sure you can force his wife and kids to work for you, but their earning power is far less and it's unlikely make it all back. If you're refusing payment, it's actually highly unlikely they'll keep the money around. It'll just go to someone else. People who take mob loans after all aren't in good financial shape. Then you have direct your legbreakers from their normal job to break their legs when you could have taken the money before.

Also loan sharks typically do high turnover loans. Payday loans are a common loan shark loan. They're suppose to be paid back within 2 weeks. Since the interest rates can be extremely high for this (the illegal ones can reach thousands of % per year), if it wasn't high turnaround, it would reach humanly unpayable levels.

Having a limited payback scheme only makes sense if your customers are reliable payers and you have trouble getting new ones. Neither of this facts, especially the later, is the case with loan sharking, real or cinematic. Now if your only borrowers are PCs, then that's totally the case, but that seems really really metagamey.

I like DITG street-level games, and some of your ideas seem pretty good. I do think you are going to see a lot of Adepts and Mages, but plus ca change. Things that I would add are:

1) Skill limits. Max 1 skill at 5 or 2 4's, or if that seems too high 1 4 or 2 3's with the rest 2 or less. Also max skill group of 2.

2) I would raise the cash limit to 20K - 30K, which would allow someone to build a proto-sammie with WR1 and a cyberarm, or something.

3) Suggest throwing a bone to people making a mundane: let them take slightly higher skills and/or higher starting cash than their awakened counterparts, or simply give them an extra 50 karma or so to play with.

The idea is that the mage had to invest money to develop his magical skills.
And as to the loan-shark: That depends. I don't expect these runners to be powerful enough to deal with a larger criminal outfit in any kind of final manner - unless it's final for them. And they can't protect everyone. So it makes every kind of sense to threaten their friends and family.

More karma means more powerful mages. Limiting availability hurts mundanes just as much as limiting money. If you can't buy one expensive piece because of avail that would make things worse. Well, I'm not saying this couldn't also work, it'll just be a different game.
What's the KISS principle?



20-30k is certainly possible. If you assume these are life's savings. However, it has been my observation that if you want a game with "poor", lower class protagonists, then realistically they will never had had a few thousand nuyen on hand to buy expensive stuff. It must have come by upgrading, mixing and matching, which is hard to balance pre-chargen.

I don't like skill limits much. High skills come at a high opportunity cost when karma is so scarce.

@UmaraVI: Your characters are awesome, I can simply only hope for the ineptitude of my players. For an online /PbP game I would have to be even much more restrictive.

I have heard two different Versions of the KISS Principle...

KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid... (This is the most common one)
KISS - Keep it Stupidly Simple... (Likely came about so as not to offend those who would be by the more common one)

I don't think that's true. There's a lot of useful stuff to be had at Avail 8 or lower: Wired Reflexes I is 8R, a Lined Coat is 2, full-body FFBA is 8, and the Ceska Black Scorpion and Steyr TMP machine pistols are both 8R. There's your street-level samurai right there. Hacking programs are (Rating x 2)R, commlinks have no Availability given (assumed to be ubiquitous), and a hot-sim module is 4F. There's your street-level mundane hacker. They're not going to have any high-end bioware, but that's in keeping with the spirit of the game.

Limiting money doesn't just hurt mundanes, it makes them unplayable. If you're fine with MagicRun, that may not be a concern, but if you want your team to reflect the supposed rarity of the Awakened, it becomes an issue. If you're concerned about powerful mages, incentivize mundane characters. Someone else suggested giving mundanes extra karma. Perhaps require Awakened characters to be built on the 300-karma system with limited cash, and mundanes with 600 karma and unlimited cash.

Alright, fair enough, awakened, at least full casters, need to be limited further. I will still not buy that street level can mean throwing gear around worth hundreds of thousands, even if it's shitty gear. If they have that cash, they can simply get a better lifestyle. They can buy more stuff. Because as soon as the game starts they can most certainly buy more stuff. Where is the point? Verisimilitude is lost completely if you do not balance this via available cash for gear. Street level is not an attitude, it's a sad reality.

You could say not to limit cash but no single item may cost more than 5000nY or so. But that shoots mundanes in the foot even harder.

I'm beginning to think the only way to do this is to limit casters to aspected magicians. Then summoner will only be the toolbox and the posession guy the melee meatshield, until he gets channelling, at which point he just has to be the Sam. I can also go so far as to limit spirit force: Any spirit summoned of a force greater than complete total karma (chargen+game) divided by 100, rounded down, will absolutely use edge to resist summoning.

*facepalm* You're making it complicated again. KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. MagicRun, no matter the power level, ain't street. As far as characters using their income to buy more stuff: DUH! What were you expecting? Your characters won't have gear worth hundreds of thousands, because it's a pain to keep track of. At Avail 8 or less, virtually everything you can get is cheap; you'd have to buy warehouses full of stuff to hit the 250,000 nuyen limit. Besides which, 600 karma is just tight enough that you really can't afford to sink a lot into gear. That aspect becomes self-limiting. Glass-Walker was built with 600 karma; look at his gear. 7430 worth, or 3 karma. Any character who dumps huge amounts of karma into gear won't have the skills or attributes to use it effectively. It just isn't as big a problem as you're making it out to be.

Priority gen + points to fill out the lameness.
Add at LEAST enough BPs to get a full set of qualities, but spend it under karmagen for more interesting spread out characters.

Very simple, very quick, keep free knowledge skills, throw an availability limit on there and cap starting skills at once lower than normal and you're probably good to go.

Except vehicles - a van with some modifications (eg a few smuggling compartments for drugs) is still 35.000+

If you aren't planning to allow aspected magicians to buy off Aspected Magician, then you end up with a different problem which is that the aspected magician can never un-aspect themselves, but everyone else can eventually hope to get off the street and into the big leagues.

I think the ultimate source of your problems is allowing mages to start with more magic than is sensible, and most of your problems can be fixed by capping Magic at 3, spells at 5, and gear at 50000Y.

Theoretically I am very flexible with things like this. The cost to un-aspect would have to be looked at, though, since the gain by taking aspected over full is so miniscule, considering that you're making a character with half a testicle compared to a full mage.

How would you limit spells? 5 spells?

Maybe Magic should just cost differently than any other attributes? It's clearly superior. 10x level pre-initiation, and 5x after might be appropriate.


@Tanegar: With a system as inherently borked as SR, keeping things simple just doesn't cut it.

The design goals I don't want to deviate from are still:
- little cash for starting equip
- a strong financial incentive to take high-risk operations without having them pay too well

In the spirit of actually making proto-runners who aren't there yet, another idea would be to simply stick with 10-20k of starting cash, a dept of up to 30k, no buying karma, but limiting magic to 1, magical skills to 3 and 1 spell. Mentor spirits must be aquired in the game. If you want to be magical yet take cyber you must take the Latent Awakening quality. In order to actually make this playable you may choose when to awaken.

Now mages are gimped for a good while, at least magically. And limiting cash means everyone else is gimped, too. Karma for cash should stay active in play.

Magic 1, Skills 3 and 1 Spell seems a bit harsh - i would raise the magic limit to 2 and allow 2 spells.

I think this is your best idea so far. Magic 1 is actually plenty useful so long as you are consistent about enemies also being street level - even low-force spirits are plenty useful, and one good spell like Stunball or Mind Probe is a game-changer even at force 2.

I would, however, suggest that this is going to give adepts el shafto, and allow Adepts (not Mystic Adepts, just Adepts) to have Magic up to 2 and also do allow them to start with a Way (since Ways are less like Mentor Spirits and more like Traditions).

Do you plan to just drop technomancers?

Ok!

Mages at 1 (they will advance very quickly, initially), adepts at 2, and yes to ways. And yes, I'm going to drop technos, probably unless a player becomes very interested in making one, at which point I'll try to think of something.

I'll probably still run into very disparate advancement speed issues - mages just don't even need that much karma, and even while raising only magic, they will grow in power at double the rate as anyone else. Going from Magic 1 to magic 2 doubles your damage output potential. Still, probably initiatially a mage might actually want to pick up a gun in a fight. 6 karma and smart goggles will give you in the range of 8 dice to shoot, and a nice automatic pistol will make sure you hit. Any mundanes will just need everything, and suck up money and karma like sponges. Adepts are more like mundanes in this, although there, too, the additional magic points will result in quick jumps in power. Mysads are a mixed bag. They are ALWAYS karma graves.

Now as to opposition: I see one of the main perks of playing at this level is that the threat level is very high, and even mooks are dangerous. And there will be enemies who COULD walk all over this group. Fights are supposed to be touch and go for a bit, even when against gangers, hoodlums and the like. But playing it smart, and taking care to talk where talking is appropriate, should let the PCs survive until they advance a bit.

Do the Attributes also advance at (New Rating)*3 Karma?

Yes, I would think so.

I would also take care to be fairly generous with karma, and also allow a lot of different money-making schemes to work in addition to running.