Had a Troll Ganger who rolled 16+ Dice on all Combat tests he made (and his Unarmed was 19 IIRC), without Combat Pool. Pretty easy too.
Of course, he had about 300 Karma by that point too.

yes, if you pump every single point of karma into raising skills, you can get skills higher than drek in SR3 . .
but really, usually people build to broaden their characters instead of specializing even more in game . .
and 16-19 dice is easy enough for starting characters in SR4 to achieve.

Well, aside from skills, pools added more dice to the rolls in SR3.

That's an interesting point, as pools also provided a limiting factor since they were split up over multiple initiative passes. So you could burn all (or almost all) your combat pool to double your dice for one roll, but the other 2, 3, or 4 rolls you might make that turn would be straight skill.

And most karma for non-Awakened went into skills back then because it was a complete waste to bother with attributes beyond character generation because they didn't affect jack. Including attributes in the dice pool was the SINGLE BEST thing 4th did because it actually made attributes matter for a change.

Surely melee damage, damage resistance, Reaction (Initiative), magic resistance, perception, and derived pools meant a little. Why is it that attributes should count, point for point, the same as skills for making tests?

The thing is, it was easier to spend you cash on better Cyber (for the attribute bonusses) .... and your karma on Skills. So much better and easier, in fact, that you'd be "gimped" if you did it any other way.

With the higher caps for skills, they should be a more significant portion of the dice pools, at least at the higher levels. I am also wondering if skill in SR5 will also play a role in the base cap for hits (which Accuracy then modifies).

This... I never raised Attributes with Karma in SR3 after Character Creation. Always went into Skills.

TJ: yet in SR4... outside of buying 1 rank or a specialization in this skill or that... all my karma tends to end up in attributes... even for mundanes.... and yes I'll pocket that nice cyber/bio bonus to attribute scores on top of that thank you very much!

Because the SR4 cost structure is just so far skewed in favor of attributes over skills...

That's why I'm looking at the new skill cap with a jaundiced eye... it won't make a difference the higher cap if the current attribute costs relative to skills stay in play.. people will still max out attributes instead of spending on skills if they can if they're trying to spend karma efficiently.

And this tends to become more true the more you gimp karma awards... the rarer and harder to get to advance the more efficient I find people tend to be with those expenditures.

And I am completely the opposite of you in SR4. I rarely, if ever, raise my Attributes outside of Augmentations. All my Karma goes to Skills, Spells, Complex Forms, Magic/Resonance or Initiations/Submersions. Different Strokes, I guess.

Same. I think I've raised an attribute maybe once or twice, and that was always going from 1-2 or 2-3, never higher. Everything else goes into raising skills, learning new ones, or qualities.

Well in earlier editions... all that karma went into skills yes. (and initiations which came with free magic... talk about the gravy train days... just avoid that magic loss!).

Attributes were largely ignored...


But as of 4th edition... that's largely changed... if there are more than 2 skills tied to that attribute it's a no brainer. If it's an attribute like reaction which gets rolled a lot solo... again no brainer.

Again... even individual skills.. it's generally cheaper to raise the raw magic score than worrying about spellcasting, counterspelling, summoning, and binding. (and more effective because of all the other thing magic adds to and sets thresholds for). If each of those is at 4... you're looking at 40 karma to raise them all... 40 karma will buy you magic 7->8 provided you have the initiations (and you *WANT* the initiations anyhow).

Yes even counterspelling... want to neuter a mage without extended masking... see that increase reflexes spell... dispel it (roll magic + counterspelling...) the mage loses extra IP's immediately. And he can't counterspell you doing it like he could a combat spell.


Agility is another good example... how many different skills do I use? a melee... thrown (oftentimes defaulted for grenades)... a ranged... heavy weapons... and that's not even touching infiltration, palming, etc... 25 karma to raise from 4->5 is damn cheap... as is 5->6 at that point.


In general i find the rule of thumb is optimal karma expenditure is natural attribute == 2x skill. And again there are some things attributes can do which skills never touch or help with. It's simply a matter of willpower to avoid spending it early and often on small things... (though 6 karma here and there for a skill + specialization is generally well spent).

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I generally make a habit to not explicitly suggest how to alter numbers or mechanics. Mostly because it's time I could have spent better doing other things and also because I'm not a game designer.

Being a game designer,* I am the reverse.

*Speaking of, during the making of this game, we were having trouble determining how to take the end-game positions of the players (and other tokens) and converting it all into a single, numerical score to determine the actual winner (i.e. does X have more weight towards winning than Y, and how much more Y do you need to overcome a lack of X?). Offhand I went, "this plus this plus three times that" and promptly did the math for the result on the board, got a reasonable spread of final scores (24 to 36), swapped the positions of two tokens because the setup was "very clearly player 3 won, he has the most X, the most Y, and the most Z" so that a different player had high X, moderate Y, and low Z where player 3 had low X, moderate Y, and high Z (that is, took a losing player and gave him half of the winning player's points, so instead of P3 having dominated in all three categories, the two players had taken different routes: one person monopolized X the other monopolized Z). Recalculated the point spread and....it was a tie game, 31 to 31.

A few more games using that scoring calculation ended similarly, a narrow point spread (indicating a close game even at the end), but clear and logical winner. I think we ended up making one small change to reduce the power of the conversion from resource X to Z, but it ended up not altering the calculation significantly.

I used to do it a lot like post novel long suggestions on the wow forums and stuff...
Came around to realising one day, "Just WTF am I doing?" spending hours telling someone how to run their game?
If Im not enjoying it, I could do something I enjoy, twas quite a boggling moment of self reflection.
On the other hand I think of elaborate designs and machinations anyway, else my muse gets annoyed with me...
Like the time I wrote a 25 page backstory for a 300 year old elf ranger.

I'll make suggestions, but I generally reserve them to things that I know work pretty well, and think that they could work well in the system at hand--such as my suggestion of using the attribute and skill advancement costs that L5R uses for the upcoming new edition of SR, I know that those costs work well from playing L5R and I think that it could very well work for SR.

Why must one only make suggestions when one doesn't enjoy something?

Back when I was still playing City of Heroes, I was very active on the forums. And I made quite a number of suggestions - some of which ended up being done, even.

Turns out I enjoyed the forums nearly as much as the game itself.

Because those who make the most noise get heard.

Back when SR4 came out, I and several others raised such a stink over some of the more broken parts of the game, our fixed were actually adopted. I was the first person to propose capping dice pools at 20, for example. I've mellowed a bit since SR4.5 came out, but I'm still not allowed to discuss some of the examples of brokenness that still exist.

Accuracy still worries me. It's a fine line between setting it so high that it's no longer a limiting factor, and setting it so low that it ruins the fun of having huge dice pools. Introducing Edge as a limit break doesn't make me feel any better, either; my experience is that Edge is severely overpowered as is.

The problem is that those who make the most noise are not necessarily the majority, and they're not necessarily right, especially in the way the problems should be fixed. A good example is the direct combat spell limitation which was poorly implemented and doesn't solve the problem.

I do remember our 3rd ed GM housruling increasing costs to raise dice pools based on the related attribute, because he felt people with inherant strengths in those areas should be better at them, and conversely if you were weak in an area related skills should be much harder to improve.



-k

that's no house-rule at all O.o
skill up to attribute=1 point per level
skill up to twice attribute=2 points per level
skill up to thrice attribute=3 points per level
or something along those lines.

You just answered a question I did not ask. Congratulations.

As I remember it:

Skill up to half attribute: 1x cost
Skill up to attribute: 2x cost
Skill up to 1.5x attribute: 3x cost

And the real amount is for base skills:
New skill level...
up to attribute level: Action skills *1,5 | knowledge skills or languages *1
less than double the attribute level: Action skills *2 | knowledge / languages *1,5
more than double the attribute level: Action skills *2,5 | knowledge / languages *2

for specializations:
New level is ...
up to attribute level: Action skills, knowledge skills and languages *0,5
less than double the attribute level: *1
more than double the attribute level: *1,5

interesting thing, the German BBB doesn't tell us what the cost is when the new skill level is _exactly_ double the attribute level


On topic though:
I like higher skill levels, but I would like to see lower costs in raising them. Not _much_ lower, but lower overall. Taking a skill from 0 to 12 would mean a whopping 158 karma points, and depending on the character creation that could lead to a huge (perceived) imbalance of the worth of build points or whatever is being used. If karma creation is used (and I hope it will), this apprehension would be cleared, of course.

Also, it appears to me that the focus is being shifted back from attributes in direction of skills, but a high attribute would still be more worthwhile. I disliked that attributes in SR3 were basically used only as pool generators, karma cost adjusters and for hilarious perception tests and the like. SR4 did it a better involving the attributes more in the pools (and I have no problem with big pools), but the attributes are, at the moment too dominant, IMO.
I would like to find a solid middle ground where it isn't a no brainer to raise an attribute instead of a skill, but rather both being a valid decision on its own merits.

Well I guess to me... my standard is such that... if i were making a purely human karmagen character (to avoid the meta stuff which breaks karmagen)... and there were no limitations on attribute spending... what would you do?


I know what most of the efficiency types like me would do... dump every point I could into attributes and raise a lot of skills to 1 (with specializations) as well as picking up qualities to taste. Only some skills are exceptions to this by the 4th rules (those which don't get rolled + attributes often or get rolled by themselves).


I take the point limit on attributes as prima facia evidence that their costs are too low relative to skills in either BP or karma.

Yes. I agree and this is one of the reasons why I feel that attributes are too important at the current state of play

And at this point, the limits concept could come into play to balance between skills and attributes.
Random speculation: Skill Level*2 is the limit of successes. Skill Level is the limit of successes. Skill Level+Attribute Level / 2 is the limit of successes.
All these solutions would make it more important to take higher skill levels and would make you think about what you want to raise with your karma.

Most people get their primary attributes as close to the level they want in creation, and if they spend any experience raising attributes, it's getting less-important-to-character attributes to a more preferred level. This is a sign that attributes in fact have too much 'opportunity cost' for their worth beyond a certain point.

In the first case (skill*2) it become irrelevant above skill 3 to raise your skill any farther. 6 hits is more than you're ever likely to see.
In the second case (skill) it too harshly imposes upon the low-skilled people (e.g. 1 skill)

In both cases, defaulting becomes impossible (0 skill = 0 hits)

In the third case, (skill+attribute/2)* you don't have a return to skills either because raising your attribute gets you the same increase as raising your skill (in terms of capped hits and dice rolled) so why spend on the skill?

*I am assuming you mean the average? Even if half-attribute + skill, 3 skill/6 attribute is enough for most people in terms of total hits, and they're going to get more out of the attribute increase anyway.

Actually i think the best way to handle the specialization 'problem' if you so choose to call it. Is to change specialization to a skill modifier instead of a situational bonus. That would subject it to the augmented skill caps and it wouldn't work with less than 2 ranks in a skill and wouldn't be fully effective til you had 4.


It would still be reasonably cheap and effective to do...

As you'd need 2 ranks in the skill to get an augmented 2(3) skill value which would improve to 4(6) when you advanced the skill two more ranks. 4 karma gets you 1 rank... 4 more gets you the second. a mere 2 gets you a 3rd for one specialization using the current cost structure.


If skills are going to higher values then there should probably be more ways to get more augmented skill values than only adept powers, move-by-wire(dodge), and reflex recorders.



Overall: I think SR4a did one thing right... they increased the amount of karma awards... so the costs weren't so rigid... increasing karma rewards and attribute costs by 50% effectively made skills and everything else which didn't have their costs changed cheaper. Really I think the game wouldn't hurt if karma awards in pure numerical terms were doubled or tripled... and all the costs adjusted accordingly. Then you could keep 1karma as the cheapest cost in the game for a knowledge specialization... and adjust all the others accordingly.

Restated with karma awards so low... there isn't enough room to adjust costs meaningfully... and fractions are messy and should be avoided.

Draco: that's why I said 'random'. It was just a top-of-the-head thrown out numbers game. Obviously not a picture perfect system I do imagine though that having limits affected by skills would be a fine thing.

I see this in my workplace too:

Rather than voicing an idea, think about the implications first. It makes your ideas sound smarter when you throw away the ones that won't work in a desirable fashion.

(At work, an example was that our sales person tried to suggest a control scheme to map to camera angle and for picking objects out of a scene. Her idea was that the mouse would control the camera and that your finger would pick the objects. Never mind the fact that those two control schema don't exist on the same platform at the same time...)

No. Seriously, I don't see a reason for building an elaborate rule system when throwing out a brainstorming kind of idea.
This is not my workplace, it's a forum about a game on which I am not even involved in writing the rules. Just a thing I would like to see.
Were I in the process of writing a rule set, a lot more thought would go into thinking about the implications, and a lot less thought (and effort) into posting it on a forum.

To spell the main and important point out for you (and not to sound smart, as this is not a thing I am really concerned with): Skills and Attributes should be more balanced.

I think he upped the multipler for skills past the attribute cap.

Been a while, my memory is fuzzy.

I think there might have been an attribute based pool cap too.



-k

I completely agree. I just don't think those suggestions work to that end at all. Largely because they make changes that do nothing to encourage the purchase of skill points, as limits scale on a flatter curve than skills do, so you can't suggest a 1:1 ratio.*

*If +1 skill die is +0.333 hits, then why should I care about the +1 maximum hit allowed? On average I'll never need it. And when skill ranks--for SR5--are known to scale up to 12, there's even LESS I need that extra max-limit.

Attribute Costs (taking high attribute metas into account and assuming same costs and caps
Attribute 1 to 2: 10 karma
Attribute 2 to 3: 15 karma
Attribute 3 to 4: 20 karma
Attribute 4 to 5: 25 karma
Attribute 5 to 6: 30 karma
Attribute 6 to 7: 35 karma
Attribute 7 to 8: 40 karma
Attribute 8 to 9: 45 karma
Attribute 9 to 10: 50 karma

Skill Costs (assuming the new cap and same costs)
Skill 0 to 1: 4 karma
Skill 1 to 2: 4 karma
Skill 2 to 3: 6 karma
Skill 3 to 4: 8 karma
Skill 4 to 5: 10 karma
Skill 5 to 6: 12 karma
Skill 6 to 7: 14 karma
Skill 7 to 8: 16 karma
Skill 8 to 9: 18 karma
Skill 9 to 10: 20 karma
Skill 10 to 11: 22 karma
Skill 11 to 12: 24 karma

As you can see, skills are cheaper to buy unless the skill rating is already very high and the attribute rating is very low (an unlikely situation). Sure the attribute will affect more skills, but that is already affected by the increased cost.

Personally I think the attribute and skill costs should be the following:

Attribute Costs
Attribute 1 to 2: 8 karma
Attribute 2 to 3: 12 karma
Attribute 3 to 4: 16 karma
Attribute 4 to 5: 20 karma
Attribute 5 to 6: 24 karma
Attribute 6 to 7: 28 karma
Attribute 7 to 8: 32 karma
Attribute 8 to 9: 36 karma
Attribute 9 to 10: 40 karma

Skill Costs
Skill 0 to 1: 1 karma
Skill 1 to 2: 2 karma
Skill 2 to 3: 3 karma
Skill 3 to 4: 4 karma
Skill 4 to 5: 5 karma
Skill 5 to 6: 6 karma
Skill 6 to 7: 7 karma
Skill 7 to 8: 8 karma
Skill 8 to 9: 9 karma
Skill 9 to 10: 10 karma
Skill 10 to 11: 11 karma
Skill 11 to 12: 12 karma

As you can see here, the same is true, but to an even greater degree with skills being FAR cheaper to raise, and yet attributes don't have an exorbitant tax applied while still being priced higher due to affecting more pools.

Adding in some 'special abilities' relating to the skill at various skill ranks could also encourage skill purchase on top of these cost schemes.

Rediculously undercosted All4Big. I'll counter it here just like i did over on SR4 forum.

You *REDUCE* the cost of attributes. You put up a full chart to simply repeat what you've stated elsewhere.

You completely eliminate the difference between 'soft' skills like knowledge skills and regular ones as well. Plus you continue the problem of attributes being way undercosted in relation to skills.

I'll repeat this on this forum... as of this writing there are more than 80 skills in the game quickly counting.. That's right over 80... with 9 primary attributes (+ edge)... that works out to more than 8 skills per attribute. Granted most players don't want or need every single skill... but raising an attribute still raises defaulting on all it's linked skills... still is used for attribute-only tests. Stated another way attributes do more than just add dice to skill tests. They define the characters physical characteristics and capabilities in ways skills can't.


Given your 1000 karma needed for balanced character and example... I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

One of the worst cost structures I've seen to date. Because it completely undervalues attributes yet again. (sorry but even in prior editions... I found a lot of people undervalued attributes... as proven by how quickly they'd cyber/bio up to raise attributes! they simply weren't willing to spend karma because skills were cheap and could only be raised through karma... while attributes were cheaper to raise with augmentations... wow look at SR4... a similar criticism is there... only now it's cheaper to raise attributes with karma than skills AND augment them with tech... the only place you see the complaint so much is adepts who don't want to resort to 'ware' for cheap boosts).


That said... I have toyed... with 1x costs for skills and they worked out pretty well from my limited experience.... the problem was knowledge skills... I solved that by buying knowledge skills 2 ranks at a time instead of only one.. (paying 2 karma got you 1 rank in an active skill... or 2 ranks in the knowledge... you could only raise active skills 1 point at a time while raising knowledges 2 at a time). It goes back to that whole 'karma granularity' problem when all your costs are a mere 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x... you have next to no room to meaningfully adjust things without resorting to messy and nasty fractions because you don't have enough discrete cost points to use. That's a direct problem of chitzy small karma awards.

So if an attribute provides a +1 bonus to ~8 skills, you're looking at what.. a x16 multiplier just to balance the cost against skill bumps, maybe make it an even x20 to account for the extra benefits you get (damage resistance, etc)?

If you think about it more like a Skill Group, where you get a bulk discount, make it x15?

Since attribute points contribute to skill rolls identically to skill points, I don't see a balanced way of costing them that won't look ludicrous on paper.

How about approaching it from the other angle then looking at karma awards rather then costs?

The other thing you have to compare is the relative cost of buying an attribute point vs. buying off a negative quality.

The ideal solution would be to make them not apply identically, but I somehow doubt that will actually happen. It's a linear system, and linear systems trend toward arbitrary power levels -- stopgap limiting measures that don't bend the curve at the upper limits are patchy at best.

I'm going to preface this... the only thing we can meaningfully argue/discuss is broad cloth ideas... we don't know enouh specifics of how SR5 differs to make any statements about how things should work in pure definitive terms.


Lionhearted... that was my point earlier... all these things don't exist in a vacuum. Yet every time I mention it... that seems to get lost in a vacuum.... To date the authors don't seem to like tables much either... when they can just use a simple easy to recall formula.


But look at the current cost structure...
1BP == 2 karma
5x attribute
2x skill.

Karma awards are currently based on these costs

you can only go down to 1x skill or up to 3x skill... when what you might really want might be 1.5x skill (merely for sake of argument).


If you were to simply double, quadruple, quintiple... everthing... (karma awards, and costs..)... you have a lot more room to fiddle with things without resorting to messy fractions.


So if costs doubled... then you're looking at instead say... double all the karma awards (so costs stay exactly the same... just the numbers are bigger).
1BP == 4 karma
10x rank == attribute..
4x rank == active skill.
2x rank == knowledge skill.

Those are just a starting point... but you see it gives you a lot more room to fiddle... you could double those again and the number still stay fairly nice and easy to work with.


As far as the proper ratio between skills and attriutes... I'd say attributes need to be somewhere between 5x and 6x skill costs.

And none of this exists in a vacuum... if costs are made too expensive for attributes vs skills... it simply exacerbates the BP 'build' problem of raisin a few things as high as you can in chargen (especially attributes)... to avoid inflated costs later.

Once again to reiterate is all this is preliminary for any of us to discuss specifics... except as it regards SR4 and SR4 only... we don't know how many skills are in SR5. Some may be merged/split... Similarly some attributes may have their functions altered... might even see logic and intuition recombined into a single attribute again... unlikely but we don't know anything except what they've told us. (My own view is the logic/intuition split was too many individual attributes... 7 was enough....).

Im actually quite happy with the existing attributes, they seem to give a well rounded description of a character.
Stat weight could use tweaking though...
Body and Willpower while having their niches are marginally useful.
They're diminished by the general lethality of combat and having bugger all skills tied to them. The interaction with damage boxes at odd numbers is just that odd...

Strength see to little use, partly because it's so easy to beef up artificially but also because of it's limited use... Not sure how to amend this.

Agility is just way to good a stat, it's useful for most everything!

Reaction and Intuition hits the sweet spot in my honest opinion, but is thrown off that happy balance by having initiative linked to them.

Logic could use some more love, well... It kinda depends on how useful you deem knowledge skills... Matrix changes might fix this though.

Charisma is charisma, it's the same in every game ever... If you're the face or a mage it's golden. But pretty garbage otherwise.

It feels like I never got points over for edge, which is a pity...

I'd probably work my way over toward derived stats again, if I were doing it.

Keep Agility, Strength, Intuition, Logic, Charisma, and Willpower

Derive Body from Strength and Willpower
-- damage resistance, endurance, general athletics (ie, running)
Derive Reaction from Agility and Intuition
-- dodge, intiative, pilot/drive
Derive Mind from Logic and Charisma
-- social resistance, indirect social skills (etiquette, forgery)


Then:

Agility = gun skills, stealth, acrobatics
Strength = melee skills, melee damage
Intuition = perception skills
Logic = technical skills
Charisma = direct social skills (intimidation, negotiation)
Willpower = magic resistance, magic skills

I'd consequently get rid of the varying damage tracks (just set everyone at 10). EDIT: I'd probably allow qualities to expand/contract this, so you could take varying levels of Ow, Hurty negative quality and get fewer physical boxes, or Brain Burnt for fewer stun. Or Meat Shield for more physical and I Don't Bruise Easily for more stun.

That would give you 6 normal attributes and each contributes a fair share to your everyday defenses and secondary skills, while each owns a group of directly useful primary skills.

EDIT:

Edge, I don't know what to do with. As it is in SR4, it gets exponentially more powerful (eg, Edge 1 gives you 1 die 1 time for 1 die, Edge 2 gives you 2 dice 2 times for 4 dice, Edge 3 gives you 3 dice 3 times for 9 dice, etc).

That is only a single use of Edge, though..
Rarely do I ever add dice to the roll with Edge. I tend to reroll failures or use it to gain an extra Pass when desperately needed. So........

There are many uses for Edge.

What you do with things rarely seems to mirror the general case of what things are useful for, and doesn't really change the fact that Edge 7 is worth 49 extra dice on a run.

No, it means that you POTENTIALLY have an additional 49 Dice BETWEEN Edge Refreshes. Big Difference there.

That doesn't mean that Edge isn't ridiculously overpowered to begin with, and giving it even more options makes it even more so. I've seen Edge 8 characters make the game unfun for everyone else recently.

Don't bring references to you Mr. Lucky idea into this thread.