Hey guys,

I'm throwing together a new runner and I'm trying to decide if I am better off buying thing before or after character creation.
Is there an accepted guideline for skill/attribute costs in BP vs. karma?

For example...
Buying a skill to level 4 costs:
16 in BP
22 in karma (*oops)

A skill group costs:
40 in BP
55 in Karma

So are you better off buying to before or after you start?

Any ideas?

Anything you want at high levels is overwhelmingly better bought in chargen, due to the lack of escalating costs. Stuff you plan to leave at low levels, eh. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Buying a skill to level 4 costs 16 BP or (4+4+6+ 22 karma.


Build your char without looking at the efficiency of your spending.
Now look at your creation and think about the values/gear you want to see in a relevant timeframe, IE half a RL year.
Last step: min/max within those values. Remove stuff with low ratings, increase rest.

Result: You achieve your goal earlier. Creating a believable char might take work.


Once you started thinking about this stuff, it is likely best to just use karmagen in the first place.

Do note that 1 BP generally equals 2 karma, so a skill group at 40 BP equates to 80 karma if you were to directly convert over rather than use the scaling karma cost.

If you ever buy a maxed out attribute, that's an extra 15 BP spent that has no karma equivalent; you don't pay an extra 150% in karma to max an attribute. Using the human base, an attribute of 6 costs 65 BP, an equivalent of 130 karma, while in karmagen it's 100 karma. With other metatypes, YMWV.

1 BP ~= 2 Karma

However, you're looking at build costs.

Let's put it this way:

HIGH stat and HIGH skill favors the BP method.

MANY LOW skills favors the Karma method (because 1 rank costs 2 BP and 2 Karma, but you get oodles more Karma to play with).

another caveat, certain things have *extremely* good value to buy with BP always.

for example, if you're planning to make a technomancer, you are going to want to use BP to generate that character.

in fact, if we use the "standard" value of 1 BP being ~2 karma, complex forms are such an amazing deal in BP generation that if you buy up your resonance and logic to 6 (both fairly expensive propositions), you will come out with better efficiency than not buying those provided you also buy your maximum number of complex forms (12 in this case) to your maximum value (6 in this case).

another example of extreme BP:karma efficiency would be certain kinds of focuses (in particular, binding a power focus is an extremely good deal, and i think is one of the few things that has better efficiency than complex forms, if you treat the entire CF purchase as one thing).

those are, i think, the best deals you can get.

Incorrect. As per SR4A page 269, the first rank in a skill is 4 karma. It is a specialization that is 2 karma.

My bad. Low skills are still very karma-efficient, whereas high-skills are very BP efficient.