Horrido folks,

i remember big discussions about pros and cons of the karma- and BP-build-systems. General consensus was, that the karma-system is a bit more effective, if you focus on lower skill or attribute-rankings. Because of this i remade an old char and was a little bit astouned about the result. I used the karma system and the char. was WAYS better than the BP-equivalent. I was already using the attribute x 3-rule from the errata, i also put in the costs for the metatype. So what did i miss? My GM was also confused and asked me to redo the char. with attribute x 5, but so it was WAYS worse than in the BP-version. So somewhere needs to be a mistake.

Do you have the original stats flying around, with how many BP, how many Karma and which house rules being used?

Costs for attributes are indeed New Rating*5, if you're using the SR4a rules. Karmagen was way overpowered when it first came out, since it had been tested with *5 and didn't scale down to the given numbers of New Rating*3.
Jason Hardy stated in response to a question of the HeroLabs guys, that it was supposed to be done with 1000 Karma instead of 750, but that just brings you back to the overpoweredness that you had with 750 and New Rating*3 for attributes.

Often used house rules include:

• Free contact points, based on Cha*2
• Free knowledge skill points as in BP system
• Special attributes don't count against the 50% limit for Karma spent on attributes

We use 750 BP, no house rules. Runner compendium says attribute x 5, but the errata said



What i don´t know is, to which version this errata belongs. It only states "fourth edition, v. 1.8". Was that before SR4a? Was is before Runners Compendium?

Attribute x3 is definitely overpowered, but attribute x5 is useless. Means i go back to BP?

I assume you meant Karma points
Runner's Companion is correct; the Errata you're using are too old.


It's not useless. It usually produces less specialized characters than 400BP, and as such has a different focus.

At this point you have some options:
1) Ask about house rules. Karma generated characters are nice for every GM, since he can scale the opposition to the Karma level linearly.
1a) Ask about how your GM feels about the suggested 1000 Karma. It is the one the HeroLabs guys use in their officially endorsed program, after all, even if there are mixed feelings about it (me being an opponent).
2) Post up the stats of the original character and the Karma generated one and let people look it over, see if there's something to find.
3) Go back to BP

Ok, let say "it is useless if you have the heart of a powergamer that is not completely allowed to freak out but anyway wants to have a relatively maxed-out character".

I will go for door number 3....aaaaaaaaaand the price is: LAME. ^^

Thank you anyway.

In my experience, if you are making a magic based character, karma gen gets you a better result. For a mundane, go BP. I haven't experimented enough with technomancers to know which way they go, but I'll guess that karma gen is better for them as well.

Emphasis mine. As a GM it's easier and faster for me to slap together some 400 BP opposition Prime Runners than it is to slap together a 750-1,000 karma one. Maybe it's that I don't have the karmagen experience to do it as quickly, but BP seems to be easier to spend than karma.

And also, I've never had a problem making an Awakened character with BP-gen.

I use chummer for that. I can simply generate a character with the appropriate number of karma points. Makes my life a whole lot easier if I say "Okay, your PC was created with 750 Karma, now you earned 210, so this guy has 960 as well."
Since Contacts and Knowledge skills usually don't enter into the equation of opposition, it's even safe with the mentioned house rules.

Using 750 karma and buying metatype, I usually find that my karmagen characters come out ahead of 400 BP, and I make fairly specialized builds. Generalist builds come out a lot better, but specialist builds still usually come out somewhat better. The only builds that are slightly worse under karmagen are a few corner cases, like trolls with Body/Strength of 9 or so before augmentation. Maybe you could post the character's stats here, and we could check your calculations.

SR4A is the most recent version of Shadowrun, and includes all prior eratta. The cost of Attributes is rating x 5, and this is in the newest printings of Runner's Companion, as well. A revised allocation of 1,000 karma, rather than 750 karma, was suggested by the line developer, and (I think) adopted by one of the character creation programs, but is not official.


Personally, I don't find karma or build points to really be a good gauge for NPCs. Mainly because characters built with either method can range all the way up and down the power scale. Dice pools are really the most important measuring stick.

If you place your emphasis mostly on really high attributes (Hint: Trolls, Orks) and a few Rtg. 4+ Skills, BP is better. If you like to have a ton of Rtg. 2-3 Skills/Groups, Karmagen is way better than BP. Most of my karmagen chars cost about 550 BP, but i usually have 3-4 skill groups and a ton of single skills in the 2-3 range.

Indeed...

I find most of my builds fall in the 420 to 460 range. My builds tend to have several soft-maxed Attributes and some high skills. I think it is a common misconception that karmagen is unfriendly to optimized builds. It is more that it is very friendly to more generalist builds - I am not surprised that NiL_FisK_Urd gets generalist builds worth 550 build points or so from karmagen.

Mine tend to fall in the Low 600 Range, personally (with no houserulimng applied - so no free contacts or knowledge skills).

Yeah, mine too. I prefer the karma gen system as it encourages things like skill specializations out of the gate, gets rid of the optimized BP spending and lets me build pretty damn close to the exact character I want without having to skip too much. I found the BP system encouraged min/maxing and made our players focus too much on the number crunching and not enough on making an interesting character. YMMV.

i would be surprised if technomancers were better off with karmagen.

first off, technomancers are very heavily benefitted by investing heavily into a few specific attributes and skills, more so than usual. log, res, and maybe cha for attributes, with computer, hacking, and software for skills. given the heavy emphasis on certain attributes (which you gain significantly more from than anything else), the karmagen cap on points spent towards attributes (including special attributes) seems like it would be a rather significant drawback.

secondly, complex forms are *crazy* cheap to buy in BP. 6 BP for a rating 6 complex form (which is why you want high resonance), which you can buy 12 of at chargen in BP (thanks to a heavy investment into logic) saves you a ridiculous amount.

thirdly, when you're building a technomancer, you're usually not making a generalist. you're looking to invest the bare minimum into areas that are not related to being a technomancer... which means you're usually only looking for a few skills outside of your narrow area of focus, at the lowest level you can get away with.

that said, i suppose that would change for more niche builds (i know i saw a subdual combat troll build that was supposed to grapple someone and use resonance trodes on them, for example... that would likely be better in karmagen).

if you want someone who can be extremely good in the matrix while still being above-average in other areas, you're vastly better off making a hacker. in terms of optimization, technomancers are most effective as hyper-specialized characters (though of course, not everyone likes to optimize to the maximum, so those who prefer to go with generalized technomancers will probably benefit from karmagen, i suppose).