What is it exactly about the Priority system that people don't like? I'm genuinely curious. I'm finding this one extremely usable and playable. Not for EVERY concept, but I'm able to make far more concepts in my head under this system than I was SR4's base BP system(with Karmagen still remaining my favorite, and Sum to 10 Priority second. Mind you, it's not the idea of BP systems, it's how 4e handled it that I disliked.) I've found it perfectly usable. (Not all adapted perfectly, mind you-a combat decker I had under Karmagen just cannot be replicated with this system. That and he's missing certain pieces of cyber anyway so I'd have to wait regardless.)

Did people dislike the Priority system in the older editions as well? Was it something just more 'dealt with' in those days?

Are the disliked things the fact that there are 'set numbers' in all the priorities with no in-between(for example, wanting, say, 18 attribute points for your character idea, but having to settle for 16 or 20 instead)? Do you feel like you have to give up too much? Is it that stuff costs differently than in game? If it's that-what was it about BP that was more 'reasonable' in terms of different costs-or do different costs bother some in general?

I'm just wondering how folks dealt with Priority back in the older days before Companions came about. I know the original Becks was made under 2e(and that I knew quite a few folks who used it.) Was it never a liked system or something, regardless of game? None of us around(folks I personally knew) never really had an issue with it.

Btw, I ask that this stay friendly(Not a mod, I'm asking that my thread stay friendly and no bile or mean grumbling being thrown around. Constructive criticism, please.)

Hell, I'll start-while I like the new Priority system, and was always cool with it, my own criticism of it is that yes, sometimes it's tough to get those 'in-between' numbers. Like the example above, or 'damn, I wish I could get a couple of skill groups at 3 without having to take Priority A skills' or whatnot. It does lack the fine tuning of some of the other systems. Of course, it has the typical drawback that it's got a different way of building than advancing the character, but Karmagen is the only one that really gets rid of that. Sum to 10 Priority-still priority, but a different style-at least gets rid of some of the issues, though opens up others(you can still run into instances of 'I don't really need 24 attribute points but 22 would be nice', and so on.) But all in all, even with this, I felt it's done the job. Again, I make the disclaimer that perhaps I had been lucky in that a lot of my concepts were able to transfer well.

I don't "hate" the priority system but it lacks the flexibility of the other systems.

The new "Priority" system handles things much better than the past versions did. It comes in quite handy if you want to create a shadowrunner on the fly.

The problem with this (for me) is, that I do not create player characters on the fly. The priority grants a rather narrow setup, with little room to navigate.
Sometimes a concept needs that one extra point in an area and not 2 that cost you 5 in another. Especially if you play in a game, where you will not see much advancement, you will want to refine your concept from the start; the priorities often do not allow this.

SR1 was my first none "medival fantasy" rpg way back. Back then I did enjoy priorities over classing systems. The "Companion" books offered interesting options and when SR4 arrived, I was rather happy to see, that Shadowrun finally started to evolve. With the "Building Points" system being the new standard (even though not perfect - but what is) I quickly got used to the freedom it offered; I miss that in SR5.

The next reasonable step would have been to write a streamlined version of the "Karma" system that ties rather well into how progression works later in the game. While SR5 teases with what could have been possible, it still mostly presents throwbacks (which might be a fitting punchline for this edition, even ingame ).

For what I have seen in Shadowrun, the "Priority" system remains my least favorite creation methond for this game.

Personally, I dislike point based chargen system that use a different system for chargen and character advancement, especially if one uses linear costs while the other scales exponentially. This creates situations where it is very possible to gimp your character at chargen, and it encourages people to build a certain way. In SR4, that meant softmaxing attributes while getting them as high as possible, and in SR5, that means getting as many R6 skills as you can while still softmaxing attributes. These systems discourage people from making balanced characters.

While Karmagen does not have above weaknesses, it's still far from perfect. x5 for new attributes makes concepts such as the melee troll with high Bod/Str ridiculously expensive, while those only requiring attributes in the 2-6 range generally don't suffer as much. Also, TMs get totally boned with CF costs under Karmagen in 4e. The perfect chargen system for me would be Karmagen with attribute costs adjusted by attribute. Because let's face it, Strength isn't nearly as useful as Agility.

As I seem to recall karma gen had no cost for meta types. That balances things out a bit. STR can be as useful as agility. Just depending on what you plan on doing.

Things I like about the priority system: Simple to use, attempts to establish a better sense of balance (just don't look at mystic adepts) Shows you clearly what your trade offs are.

Things I don't like: Mystic Adept needs some adjusting, Restrictive, difficult to be a mage with 6 magic and 7 edge

I would see it as overly complex to vary cost by specific attribute, to fix that one would probably need to redesign the whole attribute setup. What I would like to see in general though, would be a change to how the metatypes effect attributes. Like it allready has been presented on these boards, a version, that calculates the metaboni, a bit more like augmentations. The boni are permanently added for any use of the attribute, but only the base attribute is calculated for progression (at creation, as well as ingame).

That would make sense in many ways.

Why should it be so easy for the average Ork or Troll, to be about as strong as norms get, but then when it comes to developing their potential, they have a much harder time. Reaching your maximum potential should be at the same price / difficulty for everyone.

People get butthurt because it limits their ability to twink out a character. Pure and simple.

Also (to me) they appear to be more of a physical mage, than a mystical adept.

Karmagen was errata'd in the SR4A print, and it's the one I'm referring to. Metatypes cost their BP value in Karma.



Here's some preliminary errata on them that might become official.

Here is what I don't like about the Priority System:

Any chargen system other than Karmagen encourages Minmaxing
especially if you get "Fake Karma" to costumise!
Fake Karma is not real Karma
Priority Gen is unflexible, adding the Fake Karma makes it a little better in this aspect but way worse overall.
Priority gen has no concept behind it. Every Columns have a different value of Karma you get. some are rising exponential, some linear. Some give 500Karma on Priority A, some only 200.
Priority Gen is not more quickly than BP or Karmagen: Most time consuming is acquiring gear, it takes the same time regardless if you get your pile of money form Karma, BP or Priority. Also switching your priorities after the fact is way more time consuming than switching some BPs arround
New Qualities cost 2*Karma Cost Karma!!! WTF?! So the book says "Catlike: 7 Karma" but it actually costs 14 Karma.

My conclusion after spending some time deconstructing the whole thing is:
The authors did not have a design concept, they just filled in the Columns. There where no real play-testing otherwise the Powerpoint for 2 Karma thing would have been discovered before the release. One of the examples is a Mystic Adept! So overall they did a pisspoor job. The system is bad, way worse then BP in SR4 and abysmal against Karmagen. But at least you can ignore it easily enough and just use a Karmagen as houserule.

This is what I dislike most about the new priority gen.

I always figured(and saw, according to what the book characters are) that the initial Qualities are worth their cost. So, say, get Catlike, and Bad Karma, and they equal each other out. Then the ones above and beyond the 25 you're allowed are the ones you pay in-game cost for. You get 25 Bonus Karma. You can spend 25 of this on Qualities(book prices), if you want, or you can take up to 25 points of Negative Qualities, for 50 extra Karma at the start(again, book prices.) Or you can take 25/25(and keep your 25 Bonus Karma.) It's just if you wanted to add *another* Positive Quality or for some reason waste Karma to buy off a negative which you didn't have to take anyway, you'd pay in-game cost. (Trust me, I'd probably prefer Karma costs of qualities to simply be 'whatever they cost', but I can see the point of making them cost more in-game.)

Of course, that's a little complicated. I actually liked the bonus Karma on top of it though. But, yes, I agree that Karmagen is probably combined the most flexible and the one where you pay the same cost all the time. I mean-okay. in Karmagen, I do still see people getting their points they want at the start. I mean if someone wants their dude to start with high Agility and Strength, they're going to make it high anyway, even under Karmagen, since in-game Karma still takes time to earn. But it IS a bit more enticing under Karmagen to maybe, say, 'well, if I start with Agility 5 instead of 6-just one die worth of difference-I get 30 more Karma, which is a Skill Group of 3, or a skill of 5, or two skills at 3 and 1 at 1, or I can boost a 3 into a 4 and still have leftovers,' etc.

When I played 3e, I always used Becks as opposed to the priority system. I think that the guy who wrote it explains it best why it is better than Priority: (note that all karma costs are for 3e - but it is just as applicable now)

"I created BeCKS to remove the discrepancy between how characters develop during character creation and how
they develop in game play. The existing character creation methods for Shadowrun both encourage a min/max-ing
attitude. For example, let’s say you’re using priorities to build a troll strongman. He currently has a Charisma of 1
and a Strength of 9, and you have one attribute point left to spend. Where should you spend that point? The “good
roleplayer” would say to put it in whichever would best suit the character, but the smart money says to put it into
strength. After all, the extra point of Charisma may be more in-character, but you can always buy up that extra
point with 4 Karma after one or two sessions of game play. Raising the Strength score to 10 after initial creation
would cost 20 Karma. The primary rule of BeCKS is that all elements of a character should cost the same amount
whether purchased before or after starting play. A pleasant side effect of this, I’ve found, is that starting
characters tend to be more well-rounded, with more midrange skills and fewer high-level skills. As was pointed
out to me, when you can buy two skills at 4 for slightly less than one skill at 6, which option do you think will be
most useful to your character? This means the sixes are reserved for the most vital skills of each character, and
everything else tends to be more diversified. This works ideally for the sort of campaigns I like to run. I understand
that other people like to see specialist characters who have a narrower focus but are better at what they do. That’s fine.
That’s why BeCKS is simply one option among many.

Some say BeCKS is extremely complicated. Shouldn’t
character creation be more about the character and less about fiddling with numbers?

By its nature, BeCKS is complicated—as complicated as character advancement in Shadowrun with the added
hardship of having to allocate so much Karma at one time. And as I’ve said before, it’s not for everybody, but for me
personally, it allows me to focus more on creating exactly the character I want without worrying about if I’m getting
the most bang for my karmic buck. The example I used in the first BeCKS article is still my favorite: Jack Bull, the
ork decker, is almost done with his character— he just has two skill points left to allocate. He realizes that his history
mentions his time as a chauffeur, and he thinks that he should really spend those points to take Car 2. But on the
other hand, if he instead raises Assault Rifle from 4 to 6, he’ll be that much more effective in combat, and he can
always buy the car skill later for just 4 Karma, when the gun skill would have cost 16 Karma at least. By staying
true to his character concept and taking the vehicle skill, he essentially shorts himself out of a 12-Karma advantage.
Why should he be punished for staying in character? Of course, I personally prefer freeform character
creation with no artificial constraints, but that sort of thing doesn’t work so well in Shadowrun where there is
more emphasis on and need for fairness and game balance. In that vein, BeCKS is as fair and balanced as character
creation gets."

Since SR2: Shadowrun Companion, Priority-Gen was our least-favoured kind of generation system. One of the things none of us would miss. BP-gen offered much more flexibility, even if it didn´t have identical systems for creation and advancement. (Sum-to-10 was forbidden, guess why.)

Once SR4 karmagen was available, BP-gen was reduced to a system for a)the few players disliking math and b)min/maxing. Three of us are concerned with efficiency (NOT the same as power), and not creating a list of "do this now - do that with the first karma available" makes chargen a much more pleasureable experience. Plus realistically broad skillsets cost a ton under any of the linear systems. Karmagen at least allows you to buy them at low ratings.

The main strength of Priority gen is simplicity. It is most useful for people getting into the edition (or SR as a whole), and for characters in one-shot missions. Neither fits our situation.

Hardly. the Priority encourages min-maxing to a new level that Karmagen can't even match. Karma doesn't punish you for taking skills at 2-3 or attributes at anything other than max/softmax/one. Anyone who says people complaining about Priority not letting them twink their character is missing the point entirely, because that's EXACTLY what it does.

That assumes the design goal is to twink out a character. I can assure you, good sir, that that is not the design goal I strive for, so please do not paint me with your broad stroke cynicism/sarcasm. In my case, I strive for a believable character, who actually possesses the support skills that he should have to function in the concept he has chosen. Priority does not allow that (especially with the ludicrous reduction in knowledge skills in SR5). I am pretty sure that you could ask anyone about my builds, and they would support my statement that my characters are very competent at what they do, without having to have overpowering DP's (in SR4A, My goal is to have 3-4's in my Primary Skill Ratings, and a LOT of 1's to 2's in the remaining skills - I aim for DP's of 8-12 dice). In SR5 (if I was to play it), the goal would be 5-6's in a couple of Primary Skills, and 2-4's in main support skills, with 1's for hobbies and newly learned occupational skills. No, that is not optimal for point expenditures, but it is realistic and believable.

And honestly, many of the characters I have seen in play (especially the power builds here on Dumpshock) are often far from believable characters. They lack the appropriate attributes (3 skills dumpstated to 1 with 3 at softmax and 1 maxed, Really?) and skills (your a Sniper with no Athletics skills, Really?), on even the most basic level of things associated with their concept, that they would never have QUALIFIED to be part of whatever field/organization they purport to originate from, let alone allowed to function in that particular field. It drives me completely crazy to see a Spec Ops build with a Strength of 1. Epic fail in so many ways it is not even funny.

My particular preference is the Errata in-place Karma Gen of SR4A. It works well for the general skill level character I prefer to play. BP is not too bad, in that you still have direct control over almost everything. Priority Systems just do nothing more than piss me off, and mostly due to the issues Elfenlied and Elfenrir pointed out above. It is the middle grounds between Categories that I prefer (18 or 22 Attribute points for example), as they allow that level of fine tuning that is important to me.

Well let's see here. Under Karmagen, if I wanted, say, straight 4's down the line(buying up from one), it would cost a total of 360 Karma. 4 5's and 4 3's would cost 380 Karma. 1 6, 4 5's, 1 3 and 2 2's would run me 415 Karma. 2 5's, 4 4's, and 2 3's would run 370 Karma. Those are all set up with the equivalent of 24 Attribute Points.

Now IMO, there IS a measure of min-maxing and optimizing Karma use in Karmagen, sure. Above, I'd say, from a numbers perspective, the 5/5/4/4/4/4/3/3 for 370 Karma would be what is IMO the best Karma to Numbers ratio on that group.

But yeah, it's a different style of min-maxing. Systems that don't share the same progression method(in SR, that's Prio and BP together), usually are more for 'get the high stats you want high now due to cost.' Skills are kinda the same; say, Skills A where you get 10 Skill Group Points. 2 at 4 and 1 at 2 would cost 115 Karma, 1 6 and 1 4 would cost 155 Karma, and 2 5's would cost 150 Karma. (Actually, I remember one of the numerical things with karmagen-Skills of 4 were often seen as very desirable.)


So while both systems have minmaxing, it's a different type of minmaxing. Karmagen isn't immune to it, but as the Becks description above says, there's less 'Hmm, take the 6 now and just increase the 2 to 3 in game since it'll only be 15 Karma, or take the 5 and deal with 1 less die but have to pay 30?'

EDIT: Oh, the reduction in Knowledge Skills was-IMHO-one of the worst changes I saw. But that's not attached to Priority; that was just a poor decision that does nothing for the game or the characters. Trust me, I've *tried* to be constructive about that change but there is no positives that I see, and basically a lot of negatives. I disagree that Priority doesn't allow 'believable characters' though. I have made several which are plenty believable with skills in all kinds of ranges. It's just easier to fine-tune with Karmagen(which, well, is why it's my favorite.)

I see the single biggest reason for priority is this.

It's easy to make a character since you simply set the priorities then assign the points... there's very little in the way of fiddly bits. This is perfect for getting new people into the game, provided alternate official means are quickly published for other games.


My problems with priority are primarily these three.

1. It encourages twinking characters by maxing out allowable attributes and skills. BP does the same thing and is even worse in this regard. Then turn around late in the process and spend 10 karma to raise dump attributes from 1->2 as needed in the last step. Or spending 2/5 karma for that one rank in a skill group here and there to round out the character on the cheap.

2. It's not granular enough. You either get a troll with no special attribute points or with 5 of them! For all those advocating to play furries and sparklies this is a big problem.

3. You're forced to take one from each column.


Previous Editions: I hated BP and I hated karmagen as published.
SR4 karma could have been great but instead it was exceptionally abusable in other ways. So I can't say that was a good system at all. No system should give any race the option to spend more on attributes than any other race while at the same time giving them more attributes for free (or next to no cost with errata). If everyone was restricted to playing humans SR4 karma would have been great. But the way non-humans were handled broke the entire thing.


Here is my hope... one thing that has been mentioned in the past is that one of the first products is supposed to have alternate chargen methods.

Here's how I would advocate to improve the system quickly without throwing too many monkey wrenches into it. Nothing whatsoever can be done about the first problem so long as you use any kind of a priority/BP system with completely different cost systems.

A. Use a modified point buy... priority A is worth 4 points, priority E is worth none. A character gets 10 points to spend between all 5 columns...
Example: Human street sam Priority A gear 4 points, , priority B attributes 3 points, priority B skills 3 points, priority E metatype & magic since there are no points left to spend. With 450k to spend on toys enjoy... solid attributes and skills to back them up with a respectible 3 edge. Essentially you downgraded metatype from D -> E to raise skills from C -> B.

B. Increase the number of priority levels from 5 to 9. This addresses the problem of a troll with either 5 or no special points to spend! This combines very neatly with the point buy method above. Increasing the number of options... while keeping the vast majority of priorities chargen simplicity.

C. Possibly add an extra column for starting karma. Or allow people to refund unspent priority points for say 10 karma each. (number picked arbitrarily... intended to be inefficient compared to spending it on the priority chart in the first place! But some people might want more karma to spend as they will instead).

I loved Sum to 10...but there are others who advocate against it. Back in 2e, it became a bit too 'Mundane Human Gets Lots of Stuff', and metas weren't exactly super-balanced with this system either. See, I'm in the PoV that when you're a Mundane Human, you SHOULD be able to get a lot of stuff. I also think the way 2e was set up though made being a Mundane Human a little too good, because of how skills worked-remember how a lot skills were more 'groups' in those days, where Firearms would enable you to be able to shoot everything from a Tiffani Self-Defender to an Ingram Valiant LMG. So due to this you could get away with the Priority C Skills(24 points, or 2 points under Sum to 10), and get 30 Attributes and the million. (Though, technically, in 2e, Attributes were so cheap to raise, and the 1m could buy them up while you waited, taking Skills/Resources A and Attributes C was also a popular makeup.)

Meanwhile, Metas? A, say, Elf Adept still had to take Elf 4 points, Adept 2 points, leaving him with 4 points. He could have taken Attributes and Skills both C, but that would have left him with 500 nuyen. Ouch. A, say, Troll Combat Mage would have had to take Race 4, Magic 3, leaving him with all of 3 points left to spend.

Personally with the new 5e prio system-variant levels of SA points, variant Magic priorities, etc, Sum to 10 would work wonderfully.

RE: Points for Karma-there have been some discussions I've been a part of that advocate being allowed to trade Special Attribute points in for some Bonus Karma, or possibly being allow to shift up to 2 toward Attributes and Skills(but no more than 1 each-1 SA point to 1 Attribute point, and 1 SA point to, say, 3 Skill Points-but that's it.) JUST enough for something, but not enough to, say, take Attributes A, Elf B and shift like 5 more points to Attributes. A single point could be something.

I've heard that before about the old priority charts... HOWEVER...

Attributes under 3e and prior were handled far differently than currently, specifically they're 50% higher. Also the first rank of an attribute wasn't free.. but also came out of the pool of attribute points. An attribute of 9 then is supposed to be equivalent of an attribute of 6 now! I point you at the SR3 -> 4 conversion document for missions. So all this about they gave 30 then and only 24 now kinda misses a very important point!


Essentially the current priority A is equal to the old priority A... at 24 points... because in SR3 the first point wasn't free. In SR4... you get 8 points for free on every character with 1 in each attribute in comparison. So that means by SR3 standards it's 32 points not 30 to spread across 8 attributes instead of 6. (and ignoring the fact that attributes were allowed to be 50% higher in SR3).

http://cdn.shadowruntabletop.com/wp-conten.../sr3_to_sr4.pdf

According to the old official conversion document step 1. was multiply all your attribute values by 2/3rds... reducing 9's to 6's etc.
Assuming the defacto old standby of 3/3/3/6/6/6 attributes for a priority B distro (which was very much the norm back then for priority A mages). We'll say mentals are the 6's and physicals are the 3's just for argument sake and averaging out the difference.

That produces a character with 2/2/2, 4/4/4 by the first step... now multiply logic x2 and split betweeen new logic and intution (again for quickness to produce agility & reaction). Now we have 2/2/2/2 physical, and 4/4/4/4 mental. By that measure... that is only 16 points for attributes compared to the old system (remember in SR4 all of them start at 1 and get improved)... that's for priority B!. Compare that to the 20 priority B now gives.



The entire reason the mundane human gets lots of stuff comes down to there are only 5 steps on the chart! This is the 'troll problem' yet once again... trolls get a ton of free attribute points (and a few penalized attributes that don't mean anything because there is no increased cost to raise a penalized attribute! Logic 3 human or troll costs the same!). However they're so far up the cost chart there are only two to pick from... either no special points or 5 special points... there's no greyness in there.


Also, mundane humans should get a lot... they don't get extra stat boosts and enhanced attribute caps that metas do! They need something to compensate... and 4E karmagens well humans get cheaper stat raises than they do under BP was a slap in the face... because metas got cheaper stat raises as well in their non-augmented stats!!! (giving them even more to spend on their augmented ones!). In their augmented ones they got free attribute raises they didn't need to pay karma for (or pay only a token 'meta-tax' far lower. Then to salt the wounds they were allowed to spend even more on attributes than a human could.

Attributes are undercosted compared to skills... so then the line was... well humans can spend more on skills. Well if the costs between attributes & skills were balanced properly... why would we need a limit on how much you can spend on attributes?! So the human had more karma to waste on skills when he could get more dice by raising attributes he couldn't.

That was a tangent just realized... but it reflects my utter frustration at the SR4 karma system and it's horrendous implementation.

For all of their flaws, both BP and karmagen offer more flexibility than a priority system. New players tend to prefer priority systems, not so much because they are any simpler, but because you don't need to make as many choices - a pure open-build system can be intimidating when you are new to the game. Plus, it has a bit of a safety net, in that you are required to have a minimum in certain areas such as resources, etc.

For players who have previous experience with SR3 or SR4, a priority system seems like a step back. You can still make a decent range of characters, but some concepts won't work, or will be seriously curtailed. One example - suppose you want to make a human who gets by on skill, but doesn't have much luck. In SR5, you can't do that, because a mundane human, with Magic E, gets 3 points for special Attributes if he picks Metatype D. That's right - a mundane human will always have an Edge of at least 5. Or suppose your concept (decker who is tough in a fight as well as mentally above average) calls for high Attributes, but you also need high Resources to get a good deck? The "bonus karma" ameliorates a few problems, but overall, it remains less flexible for people used to build points or karmagen.

I'm not sure what topic it was in, but I said this same thing.

Players will build character to fill primary, secondary, and sometimes tertiary roles. In SR5, there just isn't enough room in the Priority system to build believable characters most of the time.

Here is the kind of thing we are talking about:

I personally look at it as Just Another Game System.

In a field with hundreds of game systems out there, all of which do things differently, and a huge percentage of which I've played.

I'm pretty rules agnostic. I play so many different systems that being tied to one particular way of doing things doesn't make sense for me.

I've played every edition of ShadowRun, from the raw beginning of 1st & 2nd editions, to the supercrunch of 3rd edition, and the streamlining of the 4th. I more or less am fine with the hybrid Priority/Karma system of SR5.



-k

A lot of my issue has already been brought up by others but I'll try to lay it out in my own way.

My biggest issue is not that the Priority system is particularly bad or unusable, it's that it was unnecessary. I know I'll have a lot of arguments against this, but I feel the point-buy (BP or Karma) system worked well in SR4 and allowed a maximum of control over the characters you created. I liked that kind of control and I feel like having the Priority system be the ONLY system in place is turning away from what I think one of Shadowrun's big strengths is; the fact that you have a lot of freedom to be creative with your character as an integral part of the world. I really don't like being jammed into a specific path and I feel like the Priority system does that, to an extent.

After going through the Priority system and creating a handful of test characters, it feels like just snapping pre-made blocks together rather than actually building a character. There is room for play within the different grades but it still feels much more rigid than the point-buy system.

What I'd like to see is to simply scrap BP altogether and go to a system where you can choose either to do a point-buy with Karma or a little more streamlined with the Priority system.

I'm not keen on the priority system either, but I do get it makes things easy for players completely unfamiliar with the world and/or system.

Hang tight for a splat book like Runner's Companion and I'm sure we'll see a BP and/or karma build system again. IIRC there was one for SR3 that added those to that system.

Is it twinking a character just because you understand the nuances of a generation system. So you can leave a few skills lower than you would have to bump them up with your 25 karma. So what? It's not like it's a secret or anything.

I hated Karma gen. It seemed to take me a week to make a character where as now I can make one in maybe an hour. Admittedly that's the difference between SR4 with all the suppliments and SR5 with none but still..........

I'm probably going to allow some flexibility in the priority system by allowing people to smooth out the priorities (pick say 3 x B, D, E) but overall it's an awesome system.

I completely get and agree with that, I think it's very important because one of the big gripes I've dealt with for people new to the system is that it's very complex to get into and I think the Priority system could help with that.

I do hope a buy system is coming soon, even if it's just homebrew.

SR3 had a companion book that introduced build points - it still wasn't as refined as SR4's version, but it was a step in the right direction. For karmagen, you had a good set of house rules in BeCKS (which was a bit fiddly, but IIRC they had some tables that did most of the math for you). BeCKS and karmagen both had their own quirks and flaws, but they were both good in one way - they made generalists much more viable, but you could still make a traditional specialist if you wanted to.

They still have the problem that you seen in TheOneRonin's example - you can be a good specialist, or a good generalist, but unless your specialty is fairly narrow, you can't do both. The only exception would be for more lavish character creation systems such as pre-errata karmagen, or revised karmagen using 1,000 karma. Ironically, , systems like that can often lead to less min-maxing, at least in my own personal experience. Players will be likelier to spread out their skills more, and explore quirky concepts that wouldn't even be feasible in stricter systems.

I think ultimately you have to allow for some min/maxing. If someone wants to build their character that way, why build roadblocks in the system against that? If that character is creating problems because they're so specialized, it's the task of the GM to deal with it. I feel like putting versatility in chargen on the chopping block in order to attempt to force more uniform chargen choices on players is a misstep.

Plus I've found that with the right player and backstory even a massively min/maxed character can be a lot of fun to be a GM for, have as another player in a game, or play yourself. And ultimately that's the goal of this: to have fun.

Because a soft 'no' in the rules is much less disruptive than forcing the GM to issue ultimatums against player behavior. Also, Missions, with it's wonderful RAW.

That seems like it would fall into the "nut up and say no" category.

EDIT: I went through with a generator (raw numbers give me problems) and did several characters and I think it's kind of crystallizing exactly why I'm not a fan of the priority system. Before I feel like I wasn't really that clear just because I couldn't quite articulate my issues.

The Priority system feels like a sliding block puzzle (one of those puzzles where you have mixed up tiles and you have to assemble them into an image by sliding them inside a square). There are various ways to get what you're going for but ultimately it starts regimenting things; if you want X type of character, you have to have Attributes set as A and Resources B and so on. It makes character creation formulaic and in so doing it robs Shadowrun of a lot of the creativity that goes into creating a character. Instead of designing and building someone, you're picking a formula and applying it.

I actually liked SR3's system better than 4's-the one drawback was you didn't buy Nuyen point-for point, but in 'blocks.' But I appreciated how they were generous IRT making different character types(you could take up to 60 skill points, for example, for those who really wanted to.) A more 4e style BP system I'd jack up to 450 BP-SR5 characters are a decent bit beefier at the start so I'd almost think it would be necessary-remove the what was IMO terrible 'huge price for last point' because you only get 1 max anyway, no need for it to cost that much at all-and cap the max spent on Attributes to 250 or so instead, which I feel is a better representation of 'a lot of your points' than the old 200 was(which is only Priority B now-I had houseruled that away, before switching to karmagen in 4.)

As for Karmagen-how do folks think that would run in a core book? I mean I've played SR so long-and used Becks for a very long time as well-that I wouldn't have flinched at all to it in a core book, but I'm thinking brand-new players. I'm not sure how they'd feel about it.

That's why I'd lean more towards a choice system. Have both a Karma and Priority system and let players decide which they want to use when they create a character. The Priority system would be geared more for newer players or players who wanted to punch out a character quickly. The Karma system would be for more experienced people, players who know what they are going for and want to spend the extra time to actually create it.

I think that's what they were shooting for with the BP/Karma split but it didnt really work out that way. It just turned into two basically similar systems with perks skewed differently for the different types of characters who used them (Magic and Resonance bias for Karma, Nuyen and equipment bias for BP).

I actually liked the priority system from previous editions (or more precisely, the Sum to 10 system), and rather detested the jump to straight BPs in 4th. So I was happy at first to see it come back as the standard way to build a character in 5th. However as others have noted, priority has traditionally not worked well with certain kinds of characters that need two "A" slots like combat deckers or troll mages, and it suffers from the bug/feature of linear costs during creation and exponential costs during play.

The "controversy" is about granularity. Priority reduces the granularity compared to other systems and makes some assumptions in choices in order to speed character creation over the other systems. That's it. If you want to make a specialist in a single role, priority works just fine.

The priority system is great at making those certain types of characters, and making them fairly quickly in comparison to BP or Karma. However that's not to say it's quick, just quicker than the alternatives, as any Resources A character already takes way too damn long to make for any reasonable character creation session, especially if they are only a casual gamer and have to borrow the GM's book just to make their character. Furthermore, for average gamers, character creation systems should not require an excel spreadsheet to keep track of the staggering amount of granularity and accounting needed.

BP just introduces MOAR granularity and thus requires more time because there's more choices. All the assumptions that the priority system makes for speed are gone and it allows the player to tweak a character just right. Dumpshock users are self selected: we all are far more than casual gamers, and more than willing to spend a week creating a character. Which is why you'll see most users demanding MOAR granularity than priority allows, either by BP or Karma-gen.

This frustrates me as a GM, because, apparently, they've never arrived to game and had to deal with three casual gamers who couldn't be assed to make a character beforehand. What I need, out of the default, basic, BBB, character generation system, is something with less granularity and less options than the priority system. I need a system that allows me, with a single book to share with three or four players, to guide everyone to create characters, together, in roughly an hour. Give me the alternative, high granularity, character creation systems in the Runner's Companion equivalent, because the dedicated gamers that are going to want that system? Yeah, we're going to buy that book anyways, and we're going to take the necessary time outside of game to use that granularity.

However, if you want to branch out into more generalized roles, the priority system disincentives the player due to the aforementioned bug/feature. Priority simply encourages specialists. In some games, this is a bug, in others, a feature. Any talk of min/maxing is missing the point because any system can be min/maxed, it's just how you go about it changes. Karma-gen is the opposite of the standard systems, and encourages generalists. Again, whether this is a good thing or not depends highly upon your individual table and how you run your games. Any "controversy" comes only from gamers with entrenched opinions that consider the other side to be... incorrect.

Actually, I have had that situation, and the Veteran Players all jump in to help create a character for the new player. Never really takes more than an hour, even with the Granularity of Karmagen/BP gen. With maybe one or two exceptions over the years. *shrug*

For the game I play in, I usually offer to create characters, with the eventual new entry, as the gm (providing the scenario) allready does enough in his part.

In SR4 I was able to create a character off the top of my head with "BP" or Karma" gen and it did not take long (statwise). The thing that usually takes the longest, when introducing new players, is the general explanation on how things work - the rules, the world and how they fit together. All in all it usually takes an evening but it is a fun evening, spent with a friend.

Nothing wrong with that.

Also the amount of time and effort do not change considerably, when meeting with mutliple new players at a time.

To be fair, one thing that helps BP and Karmagen is having a chargen program like Chummer to speed things up. Doing it all by hand would be much slower and far more tedious.

~Umi

Just FYI:
This is still better than some systems. Look up H.A.R.P. sometime. Default rules, converted to Shadowrun, work out to something like this:

Roll 6d6, assign each result to a stat.
Immediately gain an amount of karma to spend on (everything) equal to the sum total times 3.
At the end of every mission, gain an amount of Karma equal to the sum of your 6 stats.

Draco:
That definitely ranks as one of the absolute worst ones.


Overall I rather liked Ars Magica. Roll 3d6 for the stats. Sum them... up... however much below a certain figure was how many points you got to buy advantages. So if you had poor stats you'd have the pick of the litter in positive qualities.

The other nifty thing about ars magica was I enjoyed playing one of my mages minions over my mage most of the time... and the system encouraged it. So it was fun because you could show up with a different minion each time if you wished. Great way to have fun with multiple builds.

The real issue here is that you're trying to recreate an advanced character, one who has a lot of equivalent experience in a similar profession to shadowrunning, with the rules for basic player characters. Of course you're going to see a very hard time making an appropriately skilled character when you're building a Prime Runner equivalent with the base character creation system.

I did char gen with a group once. My rolls were above average and the GM was using a 40+6d10? method (I forget the actual dice). Default method is 1d100 (I am not making that up) even though below a 60, the stat counts as 0 for exp gain. The alternate method is close to what we used, but what we used was skewed in our favor. Last method is point buy.

I had a stat in the low 90s, one in the 80s, the rest were "average" with only one under 70.

I did not have enough "exp" to be the race I wanted to be.

A friend of mine had two 90s, two 80s, and two 70s. I worked out the math. I'd have to spend every single exp I got for three levels (think D&D) on nothing but stat increases to have the character he started with, all other things being equal.

Personally I'd much prefer a hard "yes" in the rules and encourage such behavior.

Considering it's already a soft "yes" already, asking the writers for a hard "no" is at cross purposes with the game's design. The writers would do well to lift the curtain and directly tell the players that hard yes and spell out what exactly the system's goals are.

Now the designers might be idiots and truly not understand their own game design, but I doubt it. The priority and BP systems are designed specifically to create specialized characters that have their own area of expertise or role in a group. It is not designed to create "realistic" characters what-so-ever. It is not designed to directly support generalist characters. If you can make it work for you in it's current guise, mazel tov, but that is not the obvious design goal of the system.

So, if your goals for character creation are not to create specialist characters, each with their own spotlight and works well as a team... don't use a system that directly promotes those goals. Furthermore, the writers would be well served, while pulling away that curtain, to say if your goals differ from creating specialist characters, here are the tools to create a different character generation system that would accomplish those goals. Don't try to force that square peg into a round hole. The "easiest" change to meet those different goals is to just use a version of Karmagen, but if you want something simpler, use the priority chart and give 6ish (more or less depending on the campaign's power level) times as many points for Attributes and Skills, but require each rank to cost one more than the previous. Boom. Generalist (or more "realistic") characters are suddenly the system's goal.

For your home games, you don't have to be a slave to RAW. Go make changes that directly support your design goals and stop trying to use a system that doesn't support you. Missions? Ehh... acknowledge the design goals of RAW and attempt to work with them instead of against them.

Since there is already a soft "yes", making it an explicit/hard "yes" would not be too difficult or at cross purposes with the game's design then.

I did some tinkering around with the system. The more I look at it, the elf techie with the cyberlimbs that I have, his biggest hurdle is the fact 'there are no Kid Stealth legs yet.' If I had a table that let me bring them in from SR4's Augmentation, I could make a fairly reasonable remake of him. By far, though, Karmagen suits this character better. His attributes are lower than I picture them but with 3 cyberlimbs it helps.(I'd say 4 of his stats are 1 point lower than I see them being, but he absolutely needed at least B Skills). He DOES have a couple of 5s and a 6, and no max attributes anyway(and he wouldn't under Karmagen), but yeah.

I was really thinking things over though, and all of the systems sort of end up 'rewarding' certain builds over others. Priority and Build Point both reward specialists a little heavier. Karmagen tends to reward people who don't hard-max. (Soft-maxing isn't too painful as long as you don't take too many of them.) I won't say 'generalist'-since, well I guess the definition of 'Generalist' is a little fuzzy. For me, it's someone whom has the ability to cover at least 3 of the different areas with enough competence to actually pinch-hit for the 'main person'. I mean, the street sam with a 3 Charisma and Logic, and a 2 Con, Auto Mechanic and Negotiations I don't really call a generalist-that's someone who can help out the Face, can attempt to talk his way past something, or help throw a quick little bit of repairs on a vehicle. Even a street sam with a, say, 4 Charisma, 5 Negotiations and 4 Con I wouldn't quite call a 'generalist', I'd call him 'A street sam that's really charming and skilled at negotiations' or maybe even a 'sam/face hybrid'.

Generalists though, aren't really super-pigeonholed. A Generalist can be a character who can do several different roles with solid enough competence, though not outshining any of the specialists. Or you can have a more 'in-role generalist.' Like the differences between two sams-one sam might have Automatics(SMGs) 6+2, Gymnastics 6, and Blades(Swords) at 6+2, where Sam B might have Firearms, Close Combat, and Athletics groups of 4. Sam A does have a much easier time under Priority, where sam B needs not only skills A but needs bonus karma on top of it for the Athletics. Now the argument that 'well if you want to be good at a lot of stuff, you should have to pay for it' holds water, yes. Now, thinking back, both of these guys could work under SR2 rules pretty nicely, but that wasn't due to the priorities being better or worse IMO-it was how the skills worked, since a lot of skills WERE actually groups. So Sam A in this case would have had Firearms/SMGs/Ingram Smartgun at 4/6/8, Armed Combat/Swords/Katana at 4/6/8, and Athletics/Gymnastics at 5/7, and the other one would have simply Firearms 4, Armed Combat 4, and Athletics 4.

I guess I don't feel that any of the chargen systems Shadowrun had were actually 'bad'(SR4's BP system itself wasn't what I disliked, it was the weird limits they placed on you like the expensive last point, etc, which could be houseruled away at least), they were different and sort of favored different builds and different mindsets, but I suppose that can run into trouble when the book only features 1 at the start.

To me the reason for my dislike is very simple. I HATE any and every form of limit that a game imposes on my character creation, regardless of what form it takes. To me, this is something that is a question for the player and GM to decide. Fair enough that you can have some fluff driven limits, and some guidelines that are supposed to assist you in figuring out how to resonably balance the players againse one another, but that's it. The priority system flies flat in the face of this oppinion. Additionally it is not a help to me in making the character, it is simply a new set of rules and limits that I have to try and think into my character concept, least I get a vision of a character I'd like to play, and then discover that I can't get the system to reflect what I want, whilst staying within the "rules" of character creation.

To me the priority system is a hindrence to creativity and a severe irritation that alone is enough to put me off buying SR5 until they come out with an alternative set of character creation rules, be it Karma or BP generation.

IMO it really shouldn't make all that much of a problem, especially if you remove all of the other idiotic limits as well (availability, no. of max. rated skills/attributes, Essence etc.). The Karma Gen. system really isn't all that complex. The only thing that makes it a bit fiddly, is the calculations. But provide a simple table where it's already been calculated what it costs to get a given skill/attribute etc. at a given level, and you've just removed the biggest hindrence. You could argue that new players won't have any idea about where they should place their skills, and that's true. But that's a problem under any generation rules, right up until you have read all of the rules and have played some games with them. You could also say that a complete newbie wouldn't have any idea about how a character of a given type might look, and that too is true, but that's why you include a number of pre-gen. characters representing various forms of "archetypes" within the game, to serve as inspiration.

IMO the REAL hassle in making SR characters, is all of the different gear and augmentations, especially if you add modifications to it. All this stuff is super cool, and I've had character concepts grow out of reading about gear and augmentations. But realistically it takes forever to read and understand what all of this stuff is and does within the game. I can create the basic character within 30 minutes, but adding gear, augmentations, and modifications takes me another 3+ hours easily. If anything, this is the real killer for a newbie player. It isn't a couple of pages worth of explanations on how to calculate the karma expenditure when making the character, it's the information overload that comes from 100+ pages worth of stuff you can buy for your character. And the priority system does absolutely nothing to address that issue.

You can only have 35 BP worth of positive qualities.
You can only have 35 BP worth of negative qualities.
You can only raise one skill to 6, or two to 5, the rest must be 4.
Skill groups cannot be raised above 4 (see above).
You cannot raise your magic above 6 + initiations.
You cannot initiate more times than your current magic rating.
You cannot have more than 6 essence worth of implants.
You are not allowed to raise a stat +4 above natural maximum.
A skill can not be augmented more than 1.5 times its natural rating.
You cannot have more than 5 perks.
You cannot have more than 5 quirks.
You cannot raise an attribute above 18, before racial bonuses.
You cannot raise a skill above 2x your Level
You are limited to a total gold value equal to the value on this chart, as determined by your level.
You cannot wield more than weapons than you have hands (or other [GRASP] capable limbs, which are not currently being used for other purposes (eg. walking)).
You cannot fly.
You cannot travel through time.
You cannot raise the dead.
You are not special.
You cannot break these limits.

Get over it. Limits exist, they have to, otherwise the game ceases to have any kind of balance.

I have to admit, I cannot imagine this ever happening to me, except in a con type setting. (Whereupon I'd go to my binder of pre-made characters and say "here you go!" and carry on.)

But in a regular, weekly/bi-weekly game? The first session of a new game is always given over to character creation, because long before anyone reaches for a book the players need to reach consensus on what sort of game we're playing and what sort of characters are needed. They need a chance to brainstorm off each other, make comments, get ideas, refine concepts, and so on. A player who misses that session, or a new player joining an established game, needs to sit down with me and do something similar: when they express interest in joining the game, the conversation about what they're going to play starts immediately. I don't think there's any way a player could possibly get the notion that they could just show up without a character and expect to play.

I believe you that it happens to you. I just can't conceive of the social contract that must exist in you group to allow it to happen.

I'm quite aware of it, and I dislike most of them all the same. You can argue about game balance, but frankly, IMO that's an issue for the GM and the player to hash out. If one group enjoys to play a bunch of superheroes^2, IMO it's not the role of the game to tell that group that they can't do that. The only problem you have is if you have a table where the expectations aren't alligned with each other, and where the GM can't or won't clamp down on a problem player and tell them "not a my table you don't" or "that character won't work for this game, it's simply too underpowered".

As for what you specifically mention:

You can only have 35 BP worth of positive qualities. - Pointless limit IMO. If you want to spend 100BP on positive qualities, that's 100BP you aren't spending on something else.
You can only have 35 BP worth of negative qualities. - Fair enough that you can only get a bonus of up to 35BP, but feel free to take more if you want them for character reasons.
You can only raise one skill to 6, or two to 5, the rest must be 4. - Pointless limit IMO.
Skill groups cannot be raised above 4 (see above). - Pointless limit IMO.
You cannot raise your magic above 6 + initiations. - I can find a good fluff reason for that within the context of the game world, so I'll accept that one.
You cannot initiate more times than your current magic rating. - Mixed feelings about that one. Theoretically exploitable, but personally I'd drop it.
You cannot have more than 6 essence worth of implants. - Pure game balance issue. Fiddly to deal with on top of that. Drop it IMO. If someone wants to play a cyborg, let 'em. And no, I have no problem with the cybered up mage either.
A skill can not be augmented more than 1.5 times its natural rating. - I'd probably modify it a bit, but I can find a good in-game explanation for such a limit. After all, you can only press the human(oid) body so far, regardless of the augmentation, and there is only so much you can get a piece of machinery to do.

I'll ignore the rest of your list, as it's related to a different sort of game, from what I can immediately determine.