Actually: No it's not. The karma creation system was tested with New Attribute Rating*5, not *3, even at a time when *3 still was in the main rulebook. At least that's what I got from a German freelancer after I talked about how grossly overpowered karma gen was.
Even with *5 the karma gen is still (as written) mostly superior to a 400BP character, as several people here have already pointed out.
So, what we have here, is a Mr. Hardy, whose opinion (which doesn't have anything to do with actually comparing both generation systems, apparently) is that starting characters should be done with karma gen and be MOAR POWAR!
Nothing wrong with that, but it's still only a personal opinion. Gains a bit of credibility if uttered by a line developer, though.

Personally, I still go with *3 cost, since the *5 cost predominantly shafts adepts even more than SR4 already did. But that's another can of worms.

That's why I like orks better than trolls, except for tank/melee builds. Body of 4 and Strength of 3 is right on the sweet spot, and their lower mental Attributes are the same way - a small but not crippling hindrance. Trolls, on the other hand - Body of 5 can be useful, but a Strength of 5 is a waste for a lot of builds, and the lower Attribute maximums are more of a hindrance, especially for Agility. And while +1 reach and dermal armor are nice, requiring gear that is specifically made for your metatype, and navigating a human-sized world as a hulking giant, are much more significant problems.

Comparing BP to karmagen, orks have a net gain in both. In BP, orks have a 20 point bonus compared to humans (50 in Attribute boosts - 20 metatype cost - 10 no Edge bonus). In karmagen, orks have a 40 karma bonus compared to humans (70 in Attribute boosts - 20 metatype cost - 10 no Edge bonus). Compared to humans, they can have significantly better Body and Strength, at the cost of a slight hit to their maximums in Charisma, Logic, and Edge. So they are slightly better at physical roles such as street samurai or combat adepts, while humans are slightly better at technical or social roles. However, you can still play ork hackers or faces, or human street samurai - they won't be as optimal, but are still perfectly playable.

Exactly. Those are the Str and Bod you were gonna buy anyway; pure savings. Troll is too far, and orks have very few drawbacks for general use.

You can read the "SR4A and KarmaGen" 2009 topic. When SR4A was released, Ancient History, aka Bobby Derrie, one of the two persons who designed the Runner's Companion karmagen system in the first place, wrote 750 karma was a good enough if using SR4A x5 multiplier for attribute, while 600 karma would actually be closer to 400 BP if suing SR4 x3 multiplier (once, twice, thrice, and in another thread, "The Karma System"). To put it another way, he acknowledged 750 karma and 400 BP weren't equivalent in the first place.

I also remember one playtester admitting he was already so accustomed to using the x5 karma houserule for attribute increase (yes, that fast, in the the timeframe between 4th edition release and RC playtest...) that he routinely applied it when testing RC karmagen, resulting in botched calculus. I can't provide a source for this part of the story however.

NMath's got the right of it. 750 Karma was calculated as an appropriate amount for attributes x5, but when RC went to print before SR4A it was printed with x3. I'll do the mea culpa on that since KarmaGen was my baby. When Jason finally applied the errata to RC in, I think, early 2012 (I have not been paying much attention of late, but I gave it to the Germany crew shortly after RC was printed in '08). Hardy increased the Karma to 1K because of the attribute increase, but this was unnecessary as that was already factored in...but I digress.

Re: 750 Karma vs. 400 BP
I no longer have the original spreadsheet, but here's the dilly-o: you cannot do a straight comparison of Karma to BP, because Karma costs are geometric and BP costs are linear. So at any nominal conversion rate (say, 2 Karma per 1 BP) you're going to hit some point where it is cheaper to buy stuff with Karma than BP, and more expensive to buy stuff with Karma than BP - and those are not going to be automatically complementary so that everything works out equivalent. While I did start out with a couple nominal conversion rates (2:1, 800 Karma; 1.75:1, 700 Karma, etc.) and built a lot of characters, I believe my final calculations were most strongly influenced by how much Karma it would take to max out a single attribute - which ties into "why do metahumans get more Karma to spend on attributes than humans?" (answer: because metahumans have higher attribute maximums, whether or not they choose to use them).

So a character built with 400 BP and a character built with 750 Karma are not going to be exactly equivalent, especially on the outliers where somebody maximizes the advantages of the different systems, but they have a large overlapping range where the characters aren't too far apart in terms of skills and attributes. This is also why I suggested just picking one chargen method at table and running with it, because mixing chargen systems can lead to wildly different character levels.

Of course, y'all are welcome to disagree with my reasons for doing stuff, but just so you know.

http://the-unpublishable.com
"Mostly not porn! Updates Fridays between midnight and midnight."

But which nonetheless, by apparent consensus, still represents a muchmore fair assessment of what each metatype should cost.


So, for Orks:

5BP Night vision
50BP for fir attribute increases
25BP for five increases to maximums
-510for 2 impaired attributes.

75 for being an Ork. Not, I say, all that materially different from your prior suggestion. And still nearly double the 45-ish most folks here seem to feel is appropriate.


Only 10? What happened to the 5-point adjustment for increasing an attribute maximum ...?

Regardless of the precise value, however: the fact that humans get something, anything, argues for every other metatype (or other sapients) getting a discount on their costs .... so that humans remain the "costs 0" option.

Pax.. I said only 10 behind IGNORING MAXIMUMS. Also, yes I disagree with your figures as you only pay for the stat. You don't pay for the attribute increases at all. So no your method is not more realistic. You give very powerful benefits for free.

The most abusive case in BP Gen is when you buy up the strong attributes using BP. Conversely the most abusive case in karmagen is when you DON"T BUY UP STRENGTH AND BODY strong attributes but instead buy up the weak attributes to play against type. Karmagen actually encourages this. Ancient understands this, we had a long drawn out thread on it way back after RC came out.

I understand his working constraints though. I just absolutely hate the idiocy that Mr JM Hardy represents though. Mr Hardy should try making some 1000 karma chars converting them to BP then trying to use them with his own published adventures to realize how rediculously wrong he is.


Also if you bothered to read my post.. I subtracted 15 from the 70 (5+50+25-10, your math is wrong, mine is right if you bothered to read it) for the humans edge + edge max increase. Then you'll notice I subtracted *15* (human edge + edge max). lowering that to 55. I then applied a 10% package discount (sort of like cyberware suittes... 10%-25% is about reasonable) before popping out that 50 figure.

So yes in absolute free attribute terms, the orc is 10 behind... in terms of higher maximums though the orc is far ahead of the human though, especially in terms of augmented maximums. At that price, orcs are VERY well positioned to make street toughs, melee adepts, street sams, even things which use logic like combat medics. The higher body allows for some very tough chars with a lot of armor. A prime consideration for a main combatant... that extra armor is easily worth a point of edge when it's constantly adding 5 or so dice to each and every damage soak roll and extra physical damage boxes.


So please read the damn post... you'll notice I said 50... which is only 5 off the 45 you just listed... so I'm not that far different from you (and that's simply a matter of 10% vs 20% package cost on the meta, or tossing in an extra -5BP for the short lifespan if they weren't allowed to use the fluffy human lifespan by goblinizing as a teen route).

Using the same method
Elves: 30BP ~=30+15+5 ==50. -15... 35... 10% off... 30BP right where they are! You could maybe knock that up to 35BP if the lifespan is important.
Again roughly 10BP more than the free attribute points...

Dwarves: 50 ~= (40+20-5+5+20(toxin/disease)-10(special size))==70. -15 - 10%...
Again roughly 10BP more than the free attributes... Not sure the toxin/diseas is really worth 20... just went with the 10BP for +1 dice on each twice.

Trolls: 80 ~= (80+40-25+5+5+10-10(special size)) == 105. -15 - 10%
Wow once again only about 10BP more than the free attributes compared to a human.

See... very consistent results here. The other thing to remember is metatype package costs are spent for IN ADDITION TO the half BP allowed for attributes. So effectively a metatype can spend 200BP on attributes AND spend race cost (which is working out to be free attribute BP + 10). So metas still make out better than humans, but not by nearly as much. It's close enough that it really is much more of a RP cost.

You're forgetting one important consideration. The point costs are most likely also taking into consideration what people might be willing to pay. Under your costs, one would likely never see an ork, troll or dwarf character enter their games as those costs are just much too high. Granted, there are some outliers that might still pay it, but that can't be counted on.

Exactly. The trouble with higher costs for orks, etc. is that most people aren't going to want to waste points paying for potential. Personally, I think Exceptional Attribute is one of the most overpriced qualities in the game, and only justifiable by a design philosophy of "Yes, you can hit the hard limits at character creation, but you will pay through the nose for them".

If orks cost 75 points, who the hell would ever play them? They would go from 20 BP ahead of a human, with some accompanying drawbacks, to 35 BP behind them.

Elves are the only metatype that actually comes out numerically worse than humans, by 10 BP, getting to improve two of the most important attributes in the game in exchange. By contrast, I wouldn't be too impressed at the option to improve Body and Strength to higher than normal, in exchange for limits on edge, two mental Attributes, and a 35 point penalty.

It's about flexibility.

If you say "it costs 10BP to raise any of your nine or ten attributes by 1 point", that's a very large amount of flexibility. If, OTOH, you present a package that says "You get 3 points of Body and 2 points of Strength", and there's no choice in where those five points go? Then, well, the loss of flexibility means they should cost less. And that's as true of maximum increases as it is of "current value" increases.

And as All4BigGuns mentions, it's also about selling that package to players. And not just the players that want to play (in Orks' case) melee fighters. IF you don't discount the "package deak" slightly, you won't see Ork hackers, or Ork medics, or Ork riggers. You WILL see Ork melee adepts.

I'll accept a slightly munchkin-able bit of extra efficiency for those archetypes, if it means seeing mroe people playing "against type" with Orks (or whichever metatype, really), because "yeah it's not the BEST way to spend those BP, but it's not so expensive it breaks my concept either".

The loss of flexibility certainly makes it worth less than the straight 10. As to the amount less the other other games (ie pathfinder) race book has a fixed item worth half of a flexible one.

Why is it people keep trotting out that 75 figure... the one which showed Pax MADE A MATH ERROR.

Why is it people keep ignoring that I cut 15 off to account for the humans enhanced edge. Also I didn't use exceptional attribute... as it is a humongous waste.


What is it people don't understand metas ALLOW PEOPLE TO PAY POINTS FOR ATTRIBUTES WITHOUT PUTTING THOSE POINTS UNDER THE 200BP limit!. An orc as it stands now can start with 240 points worth of attributes for 220BP (200 attribute + 20 race). How is that fair in any way shape or form to a human? The whole problem in all this was that at 3x attribute cost... attributes were rediculously better buys than skills in almost all cases. At 5x generally they still are. Generally the key to min/maxing your build is to stuff as much into attributes early and then enough skills to keep you going til you get some karma.

Also, the problem with all this is the package deals are very good... nothing stops you from WANTING 4bod and 3str... then dumping all the other points in other attributes. Why... 3str is a nice value for almost anyone except a melee specialist. 4bod... almost anyone concerned with armor has at least that much or more. Yes you lack flexibility, but if you're going to be spending those points anyhow few things beat it. You make it sound as if someone is trying to sell you a cuisinart. (really all the dwarf's stat boosts are relevent... same goes for the orc, same goes for an elf, and only the troll starts to get questionable unless you're going melee or tankus maximus).

Same question I asked A4BG: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...t&p=1169272

He didn't answer yet, maybe your want to enlighten me?

.... except the GM, who then expects you to roleplay your Ork like he was a sickly 90lbs weakling. Such a character should probably be physically nonaggressive, and certainly be prone to taking TONS of vitamins, etc, to stave off illness.

Except he's not. He's only weak compared to the average troll. He's neither weak nor sickly for a world of humans (which it is). A 'sickly-for-orks' ork is still robust against the flu, and a 'weak-for-orks' ork can still carry a full backpack.

Because thats what the SR4A changed it to.
And I'm pretty damm sure that the SR4A change had nothing to do with karmagen.

And Nath and me are pretty sure that it was, at least partially, on basis of statements from people who actually tested and implemented the karma gen. Something which was now also confirmed by AH, who worked on it as well.

Now what's your ratio for being 'pretty damm sure'?

The karmagen might have been tested (atleast partially if not wholly) with the changed cost, but the change sure as heck wasn't because the optional chargen system would be too powerful with the old costs.

That's what I said.
The karma gen was tested with costs *5.
It got printed with costs *3.
That's why 750 Karma was horribly broken in SR4 and works fine (and closer to 400BP) in SR4a.
Ergo: No reason at all to stack it up to 1000 karma (which would make it horribly broken again)

In my experience, the old karmagen worked out to about 550+ BP, and the revised karmagen worked out to about 450+ BP. I did a character with 1,000 karma but the new costs, and it came out to be the equivalent of 572 BP. So yeah, 1,000 karma is about right if you are trying to emulate the original karmagen - which is generally way more powerful than 400 BP.

This typically shows up in breadth rather than raw power. 400 BP is enough to soft-max your essential Attributes, get a 6 and a specialization in your main skill, and obtain the requisite dice pool modifiers. What 1,000 karma lets you do is shore up your weak areas and get lots of tertiary skills and extra contacts. To me, that is the definition of a prime runner - specialist dice pools without a specialist's weaknesses, and plenty of skills outside of his or her main specialty.

Of course, you can choose not to specialize in karmagen, but then the character would work out to be worth even more than 550+ BP. The build I did had high but not hard-maxed Attributes, a skill of 6 and two others at 4, high resources, and lots of knowledge skills which were not free. In other words, a specialist build that played to the strengths of BP rather than karmagen. And it still came out that far ahead of BP.

I'll go ahead and post the build I did here, a street samurai/face, so everyone can see it. It includes the breakdown for both karma costs, and the BP costs, for comparison:

I don´t have old karmagen figures, but revised karmagen is equal to around 500BP for our group. First attempts with 1000 karma run around 650 BP. So yeah, looks the same for me.

The change to 5x appeared in the German Runner's Companion long before 4A...not because of time travellers, but because Pegasus as usual included some errata.

I’ve seen a lot of talk about the Race costs and a rarity tax on races. So I ran the numbers and I can easily see what people are clamoring about. After running the numbers this is what I came up with:

Race RAW Cost Balanced Cost
Human 0 0
Ork 20 25
Dwarf 25 45
Elf 30 25
Troll 40 40
Nartaki 25 0
Gnome 25 40
Harumen 50 55
Koborokuru 35 35
Menehune 25 40
Dryads 45 30
Night Ones 35 5
Wakyambi 35 35
Xapiri Thepe 40 20
Hobgoblin 20 20
Ogre 20 30
Oni 25 20
Satyr 25 35
Cyclops 45 35
Fomori 45 75
Giant 40 40
Minotaur 45 55

This factors in the attribute bonuses (based strictly on 10 BP per +/- 1) and listed qualities. I then removed the base cost for “Human” from all of them. When I ran the numbers Human actually cost 10 BP, but since that is the base-line I subtracted those 10 points from all races. I didn’t include the costs for exceptional attribute (or similar) for racial modifiers. I probably could have, but didn’t as that seemed to me to be over-kill and would have placed the costs for being metahuman into super high levels. The fluff of being metahuman will just have to make up for those points.

As you can see there are deals to be had among the races and there are a couple of races that are balanced. I’m sure this will strike a nerve with someone. I figured you all might enjoy this information. If anyone is interested I can supply how I arrived at these numbers, but it’s actually simple to devise them and most of the qualities exist in the game and you just have to add up the values.

-D

*edit* Sorry, the board stripped out my formatting (TABs), but I'm sure you can make it out.

I think we've been over that kind of simplistic calculation already, though. It results in funny things like 'dwarves are a better deal than orks', which is true if and only if the penalties actually affect your 'build', etc.

I think that kind of calculation is comprehensive. It results in things like 'dwarves are a better deal than orks' when you choose look at the general overall picture. So in general dwarves are a better deal than orks, but not so if and only if you choose to min-the-penalties and max-the-advantages.

EDIT: If anything, I think the calculations are not comprehensive enough. As Glyph points out below.

Dwarves have some hefty disadvantages compared to orks. It is not simply that they only come out 5 points ahead of humans, numbers-wise; they also suffer a penalty to their maximum Reaction (which is an Attribute that a lot of combat-oriented characters will have at the augmented maximum to start with). Like trolls, they require custom-made gear and have to function in a world where things are not sized to them. Their size also gives them a lower movement rate. Even at 25 points, I am lukewarm to them at best. 45 points? Forget it.

No Toturi... That kind of calculation is NOT comprehensive... not by a longshot. DMillers numbers are for most purposes useless.


You're telling me actually raising an attribute AND raising it's maximum by 1 is equal and completely offset by ONLY lowering the maximum by one. Sorry that's just BS. People pay big money in essence and surged to raise attribute maximums. They are very important and quite relevant to builds, especially since the vast majority of lowered attribute maxes never matter to most people.


Glyph:
As far as dwarves, the problem is that the toxin/disease resistance quality is grossly overvalued as a quality. I'd say it's worth 10points max. Why do I say this... it's effectively +2 body, but ONLY for purposes of disease&toxins! Damage soak, armor quanity, health boxes... So an orc with +3 to his body score... vs a dwarf with +1 and toxin is no contest... 20BP for the quality is the source of the point disparity. The other problem is there isn't really a quality in game or surged for non-standard size. Also people don't add a negative quality to reflect their need for specially sized equipment (trolls as well)... that's another -10BP IMO.

His numbers are deeply flawed.. .one because they only reflect the free attribute points. Two because of the above... you reduce the toxin and add the size consideration above and you drop by 20 points.


The last problem is one I'm the only one talking about. Metatype is bought using unrestricted BP/karma. So it's karma spent on 'free' attributes... still leaving the full allotment to buy more attributes.

Okay, this calculation has taken into account for the improved and impaired attribute. I’m not clear if Nartaki get the bonus edge or not, so in these calculations they do not. If they do they would be 10 BP.

I only counted 5BP for size adjustment for Dwarves and Trolls as a 10% cost increase for gear doesn’t sound like a 10 BP NQ to me. If you disagree add 5 BP to the costs of all dwarf and troll variants.

Race / RAW Cost / Balanced Cost
Human / 0 / 0
Ork / 20 / 95
Dwarf / 25 / 105
Elf / 30 / 65
Troll / 40 / 155
Nartaki / 25 / -20
Gnome / 25 / 100
Harumen / 50 / 115
Koborokuru / 35 / 95
Menehune / 25 / 100
Dryads / 45 / 70
Night Ones / 35 / 45
Wakyambi / 35 / 75
Xapiri Thepe / 40 / 60
Hobgoblin / 20 / 90
Ogre / 20 / 100
Oni / 25 / 90
Satyr / 25 / 105
Cyclops / 45 / 155
Fomori / 45 / 195
Giant / 40 / 160
Minotaur / 45 / 175

-D

DMiller, we have a goldilocks problem here...

10 is too little... while 20 is too much. That's the reason why in my earlier post when I did those numbers I noted the surged negative quality which reduces an attribute maximum only was -5BP. That's the reason I broke the cap raise and the free stat point itself up into 2. +-5BP for changes in the max. +10 for the free attribute itself.


I tend to believe that metas should spend more for themselves than the points they get for free. (because like I said they get these points in addition to the 200BP they get to spend on attributes otherwise). The only way to make these costs commensurate is to have them pay MORE for the metatype than the free points they get for attributes. (makes it preferable to actually buy attributes instead of just buying a metatype for the attribute points).


But at this point, it digresses into house ruling territory. While you're now doing exactly what I did before. Calculated costs strictly based on the published quality/metaquality costs.

I had assumed that DMiller had used the RAW numbers to make his calculations and had accounted for all the increases as well as the decreases. My mistake.

I do not really care how much raising and lowering attribute maximums are valued, as long as you use the RAW values (or at least can extrapolate and substantiate those values from RAW) for it. From my point of view, however, the vast majority of lowered attribute maxes do matter to most people as much as it does for increased attribute maximums. That is why most people do not make a ork Cha-drain attribute mage, precisely because lowered attribute maxes matter.

I'd take a look at your calculations for the races.

@toturi, The second set of numbers do take into account all of the modifiers for attribute min/max adjustments as well as a House Ruled quality the was -5BP for size adjustment for trolls and dwarves. Of course I feel the second set of numbers is far outside of workable while the first set actually does a nice job of showing the balancing of the races as compared to the RAW costs. I only posted the second set to show the costs if you include the stat min/max adjustments using the RAW rules.

@Falconer, Just for RAW accuracy I used the full RAW rules for my calculations on attribute min/max except where noted (-5BP NQ for size adjustment for dwarf/troll).

All of the numbers I posted were just to give everyone (who cared) a reference point as to why a lot of people seem to think the races aren't balanced. They are not. In my opinion they don't need to be balanced strictly numerically. I'm not trying to argue this, just trying to supply as accurate of information as possible so that others can make informed decisions.

-D

But toturi, if they don't make an ork Cha-mage, then that lowered max doesn't matter after all. That's the whole point. People *do* minmax races (as you just said), which vastly affects the power question; this is what I was saying, and that's all. You can't just sum the +stats and -stats and call that the 'balanced' number.

I'm not even sure there is an analytical solution to this question, because (obviously) it depends on how you value each detail. We know that those values depend a lot on opinion, on context, on opportunity costs, etc. Agi is 'better' than Str, and on and on. However, we can still try to tweak the costs to be a little fairer.

Sorry to dredge up an old discussion, but I need to know something about this particular ruling. I'm currently the only player in my Skype campaign without a copy of Herolab. I use Chummer since it's free and it's what I use in my home campaign (not to mention has faster updates, more house rules, and more books in general). What I need to know is 1000 Karma the default setting for creating a new runner in Herolab or is it the 750 Karma from Runner's Companion? I need to know so I can set up the same settings in Chummer as in Herolab so my GM can duplicate my efforts (he trusts me, he just likes to use the Herolab portfolio so he can keep track of everyone at once). I would just ask my GM, except he's away on vacation at the moment and isn't anywhere near his computer to verify.

Thanks in advance!

As I see it, this is just Hardy's personal opinion. Herolab makers take it for gospel. Which basically means, do it however your GM tells you to do it

Which, no offense, doesn't answer my question. I already know my GM will just tell me to use what Herolab says. I'm trying to (re)build a character, but he is on vacation and can't answer the question, so I asked here hoping someone would just open Herolab and tell me what the default is.

Make a 750 character save it and then spend another 250 karma improving the base then it doesn't matter.

1,000 Karma is the default setting for Herolab, yes.

And 62.5% of your karma being allowed for attributes, is hard-coded (can't be changed or adjusted).

Thank you _Pax._

Some more notes about how HeroLab does KarmaGen:

Currently, Karma is not being charged for Metatypes, Free Spirits, Metasapient AIs, Naga, Centaur, Sasquatch, or Pixie. (Despite the rules currently saying you ARE charged for those.)

Karma is being charged for being a Drake or one of the Infected (ghoul, vampire, etc).

Ah, okay. That would explain why Chummer didn't charge me for being a Dryad. Thank you!

Both programs should be charging for metatype, though.

At least Chummer can, it's only a matter of default options

I've got to be doing it wrong then. My version of chummer has no meta-types, and half the qualities are missing.

Have you turned all the books on? Tools > Options > Click all the boxes on the left.

Yeah. Doesn't make a lick of difference.

New character > choose gen system > pick metatype > menu in middle of tab to select metavariant?

Yeah, There's a pull-down box there, but it's completely blank. Pain in the ass too, I think I'd like Chummer a lot if it wasn't missing so many key things (Spells, Qualities, Gear, etc.), all of which seem to be popping up in other people's version but not mine.

Deucedly odd. Have you told Nebular?

Better question: which version of Chummer are you using?

It's possible you're just using an outdated copy, after all.