Out of curiosity, I know there are variants on the classic metahumans in the 4ed books.
Unfortunately I don't know which book has them. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Runner's Companion.

In fact, if it's a racial/metatype varient rule thats not in the main book, it's in Runner's Companion.

To spare you the trouble of reading:

You can generally skip on night ones and focus on fomori

Boo, get out of here.

Fskin' optimizers, always underfoot.

It is true, though, that the metavariants seem to have costs with little rhyme or reason to them. Some seem to be arbitrarily more expensive than the base metatype despite being more disadvantaged, while others have abilities that make them a bargain despite the slight cost increase.

Runner's Companion also has rules for even more exotic character options, such as changelings (people mutated by SURGE), shapeshifters, drakes, infected (vampires, ghouls, etc.), sapient critters (pixies, nagas, etc.), AI's, and free spirits.

Some of the rules are not without controversy, and all of them are optional, so you might want to run it by your GM if you want to play a metavariant, or other unusual type.

I think it was in the last argument over metavariant costs that someone mentioned that they had a houserule that just made all metas the same cost, gradually going up. I can't remember the exact count, but it started pretty low with elves and dwarves.

Maybe it was one of Franks? Dunno.

But as someone that likes to play the more exotic flavors of Shadowrun, and encourages their use in his games, I would support a drastic re-measurement of the BP costs.

I am personally a huge fan of Drakes. All the fun of a shapeshifter but none of the hassle of being Dual-Natured. Plus they are a little underpowered so GM's are more likely to allow them.

Drakes are dual-natured in their drake form.

Beat me to it by 12 hours.

Right, but once you shift, it's already apparent what you are, so being DN is really not the bigger issue at that point. The fact that you just assigned a gigantic bullseye to yourself is.

A gigantic bullseye costing loads of BP in exchange for powers that don't work.

4 Points of Innate Armor is still good, even if it does not bounce anything (or very little at least).

The innate armor works. The hardened, not so much.

neither drakes nor fomori, however, are variants on the classic metahuman, but independent conditions.

Runners Companion has them all. And the costs for them do seem completely arbitrary at times. pg 70-72

Ummmmm... Fomori are variants of Trolls.

He may be thinking of fomoraig, rather than fomori.

But no, what am I thinking, no one could get two dissimilar words like that confused.

And it used to be worse....

Yes, but perma DN characters, like ghouls and shapeshifters, are easy prey for astral magicians, and have a lot of trouble with stuff like wards. A drake can fly in DN form(usually), and can always turn it off when it's not convenient.