When 4th edition came out I tried to like it. I really did. I got about a dozen of the books before giving up.

I ran a 4th edition game for a friend's kids on Monday and it reminded me how godawful that damn system is. Even as a combat game it's a poor system as there's no feeling of threat to the players and the fights regularly break willing suspension of disbelief (Goblin in a loincloth flanked on 2 sides by a fighter and a warlord, the 'tank' and 'leader' classes, took about 4-5 hits to go down because they were getting mediocre damage rolls and he had that many hitpoints). When it came out I figured that the one thing it'd do better than any D&D system before it would be translate into a top-down computer game similar to shadowrun returns. Did anyone else play D&D: Daggerdale? They failed so bad it wasn't funny, and the game was glitched out the ass on release to boot.

It's one example, far from the only one. However, in this case, it was specifically brought out to counter the argument that all problems in Shadowrun stem from inear builds.


True enough, but a good system will help everyone build balanced characters. I've discovered that certain systems are much easier to break than others. BP is among the worst, but karmagen is still up there.


I agree. In non-Shadowrun games, I've stopped tracking mundane gear entirely. I just give them whatever mundane gear they can justify. Even in Shadowrun, I don't like to track things like bullets, I find the accounting to be annoying.


Well, "cripple" might be too strong a word. Let's say that choosing one feat might create a serious power imbalance between one character and a similar one.

See, I do not see that as a power imbalance. It is a choice to pursue a particular path and not all paths lead to power... some lead to versatility, some lead to better socialization, etc.

Not all choices are going to be equal. When you try to make them equal, you end up with crap like DnD 4th Edition.

It depends a lot on the choices. Still, feats and multiclassing are the main ways of powergaming D&D 3.5. One feat can make the difference between a mediocre character and a min/maxed monstrosity.

Maybe not ONE feat; but yes, the right combination of feats can definitely do that.

Shadowrun is such a difficult game to "balance" because of one of the game's main strengths - the ability to create a bewildering variety of characters. You can create anything from a seasoned professional, to a brash upstart, to someone on the downside of a long career. You can run up and down on the power scale - even purely looking at optimized characters, there are so many options. You can be a combat mage, a support mage, a summoner, a tank sammie, a speed sammie, a hacker, a drone rigger, a getaway van driver rigger, a smuggler rigger, a face, a generalist build such as a detective or coverts op specialist - and for all of these options, there are multiple ways you can tweak them. I like Shadowrun's character creation system. It is not balanced in a strictly linear fashion, but it is good in that there are multiple ways that you can powergame - or if you choose not to, you at least have the same starting resources as everyone else, so you'll have points put into something.


Now, does it have its flaws? Absolutely. It can be hard for a GM to keep track of all of the game's resolution systems, and sometimes this results in some skills being ignored or glossed over, while others get disproportionate spotlight time. The example earlier in the thread about the face who felt he wasted his points on his social skills is one example.

I think the game needs some suboptimal options for verisimilitude (laser sights vs. smartlinks, etc.), and I feel the cheap, tempting boosts from magic and augmentation are a design feature, not a flaw. But suboptimal options are bad when there are two nearly identical things, and one of them is clearly superior.

Take Exceptional Attribute and Metagenetic Improvement (Attribute). The SURGE version is clearly superior - you only use 10 points of your allocation of positive qualities (at the expense of 10 points in negative metagenetic qualities), leaving you more for other things, and it gives you a bonus Attribute point rather than only raising your limit.

The base metatypes are balanced in that apples and oranges way I alluded to earlier, but the metavariants are similar enough to the base metatype that the differences between them are more glaring. For example, Xapiri Thepe have to take two allergies and spend 10 more build points for the dubious advantage of photometabolism. The 10% lifestyle cost reduction is nice, but ogres get it without spending any more than the base cost for an ork, without any offsetting flaws or even a distinctive appearance.

There are also a few things that are disproportionately good compared to similar things (the Ares Alpha and its integral recoil compensation, etc.), and there are some "trap" options, such as the Uncouth quality.

The biggest potential problem is that this is a game that really rewards system mastery. Personally, I think this doesn't have to be a problem. The newbies should accept that they won't be able to come in and be quite as good as the experienced players, and the experienced players should make an effort not to bully the newer PCs or hog too much of the GM's attention.

I think all of these comparatively minor flaws are worth it for the pure flexibility of the character generation system, though.

See, I disagree.

What it boils down to is, high system mastery games have essentially two subgames. The first is character creation, where you game the system to create an effective character. The second part is the tactical main game, where your performance depends hugely on how you did in the first game.

Among the problems this causes is that newer players won't be good at either game, which screws them two different ways. That also means the learning curve is even steeper, as there's two games that need to be learned. The net result is that many new players get turned off. I don't consider that to be a minor flaw.

Additionally, there are many highly-flexible systems out there. GURPS and HERO allow really fine levels of customization. In comparison, SR4.5's systems (both karmagen and BP) look like straightjackets. Savage Worlds isn't as finely detailed, but it is a universal system, which means it has many more options. Additionally, there's still lots of customizations possible, and it's many times faster and easier than SR4.5.

If you want a highly flexible system, there are many options out there that are better than SR4.5 If you want a balanced system, there are also many superior choices. If you want all of the above, there's *still* better choices. I don't think the character generation systems of 4.5 have any real advantages at all.

Or they could just add a link here at the start of new karmagen rules and newbies can get all the cheese they could possibly want.

Back to the thread: the best bang for buck is buckshot. The clue is in the title.

@Glyph

If this is a reason, why does your text sound like an excuse?
No, the shadowrun-system does not really have a lot of complexity a priori. It has onle a few skills, which are nearly completly independent of each other.
What creates the imbalance are loopholes, of which a lot are not really necessary. They are liked by a lot of players with again the excuse, that knowing the system enables you to get a better character. (Aka knowing the loophole)
This is true exactly as long as their ain't a player at their table who is better at that. Then people start to cry and demand the GM bans the character.
(Of course their is also the other extrem, if players just break the rules and GMs demand that characters and actions should be done accordingly to the rules. There is also a lot of whining about that.)

@Cain

Why would that be broken? (Never mind that it takes 3 initiations for the non linear part to be bigger than the liniear one, but thats just a side note)
I did not say linear costs automatically make things bad. If you get lesser returns, it works just fine. I was arguing about the ratio of returns/costs.
Magic is one of those attribtues which just gives a lot of "returns" as are initiations.

Well, augmentations are limited by essence. But again, it is in principle a way to get more than liniear advantages for linear (Essence and money) costs. (So yes, it is no wonder, that the system might be broken there)

I do not understand why it sounds like an excuse to you. It does not to me. Knowing the system better should enable you to get a better character, that's a reward for knowing the system better. I run my games strictly accordingly to the rules, so knowing the rules are well rewarded. To me, imbalance is a function of willingness to use and knowledge of the rules.

Well, the first munchkin trick I saw was group initiations, followed by raising the starting Magic. I shot that down pretty quickly, although it's technically legal.

The biggest abuse I saw was a Possession mage. By the starting rules, they're not too terrible; but if they initiate and get Chanelling and Invoking, they leap way ahead of everybody else. Without karmagen, they could do this eventually; but this also allows them to min/max right to it, straight out of the gate, which can quickly render most other characters obsolete.

I'm not supposed to go into the second abuse I saw, but it wasn't exclusive. You could combine it with a human possession mage, and end up with something extremely abusive.

@Cain
Well, thats mainly because of the possession mechanics. Which allows you to add the spirit force to your attributes (again more than linear benefit!) and some interpretation allowed it to surpass the augmented maximum. Thats exactly what I said: Liniear+ benefits + no hard limits -> broken. (It does not mean, that you can't break the system otherwise. Even with less than linear progression you can get overpowered stuff by using enough sources. One fine example is the crafting system of Skyrim. Right now I am using enhance alchemie+smithing +40% gear on an all leagal character. (Only mods are faster horses and a better inventar system and realistic needs (food, sleep, washing, water (and no boni to enchanting this way). But again, this is no comparism to using the restoration bug. (If I would use left hand rings or some stuff like that, well.... The point is, the stronger the raising costs for benefits better the system works. If enchanting 180 would only give you one additional percent point opposed to enchanting 150 (140 to 150 also 1% and 130 to 140 2% but on the other hand 60 to 70 10%), I would not get those results... (Or if the power of the enchantment would be limited be the soul alone and higher enchanting skills would only allow you to work with greater souls... (hard limit) )

@toturi
Because it is
Ok, now seriously.
The point is the "narrative power spectrum" is wide in any game if you aim for it. Mostly achieved by altering the challange in the game or by reading different stuff in the descriptions of the skills (attributes). Thats not really a mechanical point. I can give a stripper gone shadowrunner the same stats as an commando without much blinking of an eye.


Why? Should knowing the tax code better allow you to pay less taxes?
The point is in an ideal system this is not the case. Now, no system is ideal, because we are all humans. The real question is, how close to the ideal can we get. And as far as I am concerned it is quite easy to get pritty darn close. Or to be more precise: Close enough that you won't realize the difference ingame! (Unless both characters were build by very experienced players. One to be good and the other to be bad)

No, but unfortunately it appears to do so anyway.

Yes, it does. If you know where the tax breaks are, if you know what you can claim tax relief for, if you know... My point is while the system is not ideal, the people who know are more knowledgeable can make the system work for them better and I think that this is something I can accept and support. To be more precise, if player A is more experience than player B and both are building characters to be as superior as they can using the same yardstick, player A should build a better character and that difference should show in game. This is my ideal - more knowledgeable players building better characters.

Well, it's one example. Basically, I dispute the idea that linear mechanics are responsible for every broken rule in SR4.5. Initiations aren't linear, and they break the game rather quickly, as demonstrated.

The first example is a little better at disproving your point. Remember, I ended up houseruling this one away, but technically there isn't a hard cap on Magic to start. Assuming full Essence, the limit is 6+Initiation Grade. If you initiate multiple times in chargen, your limit increases, and you can buy up your Magic score as high as you want. In practice, this meant a starting Magic of 8 or 9: very expensive, but really powerful and broken. I never allowed those monstrosities into my game, but it was overpowering, even under a quadratic system.


The problem is, they're really two separate games. If you're good at the character creation subgame, you'll do better in the main game, even if you don't know those rules as well. For example, I haven't even finished reading all of SR5, but I've dominated every combat my character has gotten into, because I built him well. Players who focus on the main game should be rewarded, yes; but the character creation subgame only happens once. Why should that be so highly rewarded?

Cain, you keep coming back to hating karmagen and your only example is initiaition...and now you're talking about group initiations??? DON'T ALLOW THEM. Problem solved. If you play in a group that lets it happen either ask the GM to put a limit to it or ban it, or otherwise plan your character accordingly to keep up with the magicians.

I just can't wrap my head around how Priority is this awesome and totally fair system even though it literally punishes you for making certain choices, whereas karmagen never can.

First of all, I actually have a topic ban on the #1 abuse. I cannot go into it.

However, even removing initiations, karmagen was severely problematic, especially since it heavily favored Awakened characters. The clearest abuses were initiation, and thanks to the topic ban, I can't discuss some of the others. But in general, I can say I saw even more min/maxing under karmagen than I saw under BP... and I despised BP.

Second, where have I said Priority is "awesome and totally fair"? The 4.5 Priority system was a piece of crap.

Third, where are you getting the idea that karmagen doesn't punish you for making certain choices? Just about every system does that. Karmagen does it differently than BP, yes, but that doesn't mean it isn't punishing certain choices.

@Cain
But magic 8 is not really that high, now is it? It is two points up from the normal maximum.
Now do the same thing with a linear system. So one initiation would cost about 7 to 10 BP.
You can bet your ass, that you would see magic 10 and 8 initiations at the very beginning.


Maybe I wrote it wrong. Not every linear machanic is bad. But every linear mechanic will be breaking if no hard limits are enforced.
To be safe, every mechanic would need to be less than linear. So deminishing returns in every way.
If it ain't like that the system does not break "every time" but the potential is there. And giving the right circumstances it will break.

A Magic of 8 is pretty bad, especially in the hands of a Possession mage. But even without that, or any metamagics, it still means you can summon up to Force 16 spirits and throw Force 16 spells. If you're clever about the rest of the build, and which spells you're throwing, you don't risk much Drain, even if it's physical. Spirit drain is a lot more random, but there are ways to minimize the risk. That really does overpower the game, especially since most combats only lasted until the mage threw a combat spell.

Adepts were another problem. Because you could buy PP for 20 karma, they could easily end up with a huge array of abilities. Sure, none of them could go over 6 if I disallowed initiations, but that's still a lot of powers.


Personally, I prefer hard limits to diminishing returns. As I got to know SR4/4.5, I started using the Missions rule of capping pools at 20. (Actually, I believe I came up with it first, and Bull borrowed the idea from my posts here.) It was simple, elegant, and difficult to break. The problem I have with diminishing returns is that someone will come up with the optimum ratios, and squeeze even more advantage out of the system.

I supposed I should explain my history with karmagen. I was the primary GM, and the campaign was designed to test the system. So, everyone's characters (built under BP) were meant to be very Over-The-Top in power level. I wanted an action movie, Feng Shui vibe. There was a little character rotation, too, since we occasionally swapped GM duties. We got a hold of karmagen, and a couple of us (the best min/maxers in the group) decided to test it out.

Some time later, we had six characters built under karmagen submitted for approval. Between me and the other GM's, we allowed *two* of them into the game. That's right, in a game designed to be ridiculously over the top, two-thirds of the characters were rejected for being too powerful in relation to the existing characters. I don't recall the builds on the ones that were rejected, but of the two that were let in: one was a sorcerous mage with no initiations, and the other was a mundane shooter. The shooter's player was booted from the group not long after, but he pretty much put all the other shooters to shame. And the mage didn't do much spirit cheese, but she did throw huge spells with absolute impunity. Again, combats generally ended when her turn came up, because she'd throw a Stunball or Ball Lightning and everything would fall over.

@Cain
As I said, that has a lot to do with the fact, that you get a lot out of every additional point of magic (to the point, where drain becomes the more critical issue)
The whole spirit thing is, that spirits scale even stronger than linear a force 4 spirit is not even a quater as good as a force 8 spirit.


But again. Buying one point for a set amount of Karma is linear advancement (again only kept into place because of the existing limits to the single abilities).


Yes, that works, too. As long as you enforce them in every aspect.


You got the same if not a bigger problem with hard limits. Getting the exact number of dice for the least cutbacks...
The main differance would be, that for a system with deminishing returns, you search for things, which are not effected or can just be added linearly. Situational boni etc. those are a waste of space in an system going for a fixed number of dice, of course. You will optimise differently, but you will still be optimizing.

With Karmagen, there was the big issue of attributes for 3*Karma, which was horribly cheap. But that was a flaw from the system in any case. If you used BP and could expect some karma, it was a very good investment to leave some attributes at 1 (because, well you could just pump them up with the first karma you got, dirt cheap).

That was actually directed at Samoth, who wanted a non-initiation abuse of karmagen. Sorry, I should have been clearer.

Optimization isn't the problem. It's gaming the system that's the issue.

Basically, players who game the system can easily start an arms race between the player and the GM. In order to challenge the superior character, the GM has to game the system as well, to build superior opposition. In response, the player tries to squeeze even more advantage out of the system to counter the GM. The GM is forced to escalate back, and a dangerous spiral begins. If the GM is playing fair, the one who wins is the one who can game the system the best. Unfortunately, that's not always the GM.

By itself, this is bad enough. However, there's another serious issue: the other players. If they haven't min/maxed to the same level, they're going to get stomped by opposition designed to challenge the overpowered PC. That means they likely aren't having fun, and that is the death knell for any game.

When you put in place a set of diminishing returns, you're opening the gates to potentially gaming the system. It can end up with a battle over who can manipulate the numbers the best. That's one of the reasons I dislike a complex system, because I can get out-mathed. Hard limits are much easier to see and enforce, they work very well in theory and practice, and there's fewer opportunities to game the system.

Problem with GURPS and HERO (as an example) is that they have the same problem you are describing. System Mastery is KING in Hero System, for example. The More flexible the system, the more System Mastery will reward those who take the time to gain it.

Except that Initiation is not allowed by default in Chargen. As has been stated many times. You, as the GM, HAVE TO ALLOW IT before it can be exploited. If you don't allow it, it will NEVER be a problem.

I don't know what you mean by topic ban. I was talking about SR5 priority which is our only choice and you seem to favor over any other brand of generation for unknown reasons.

Karma gen uses the same system as in-game advancement, so by logic there are no wrong choices. I suppose you could say buying nuyen is a bad choice since that isn't directly transferrable in-game, but other than that any other decision is a direct 1:1. You may not like certain aspects (costs of metas, quality costs, getting high attributes) but if that's the case BP is a functional system alternative.




This makes no sense. The sorcerer was created by the rules with no initiation, so how did they throw "huge spells with absolute impunity"? Any magician in SR4 could do that no matter what system they were created under.

You're entitled to your opinion but just because you saw a couple people submit broken builds (by your own words, something you were TRYING to do) doesn't mean the system itself is broken.



The GM never has to game the system to challenge the players. Even if your PCs are mega-star prime runners they can still be easily challenged by security drones, larger groups of mobs, spirits, etc. etc.

I'd say the biggest loopholes that allow such exploitation of the rules stem from IMPLICIT prohibitions, rather than EXPLICIT, not to mention misreading of the rules. In BP gen, Initiation is IMPLIED to not be allowed, as Initiation requires Karma, which you don't get at character creation. It's not EXPLICITLY stated as such. Even in the Runner's Companion, Karmagen doesn't say that Initiation is FORBIDDEN by BP gen or itself, it just sort of alludes to this in a side-box on a page and says a GM MIGHT want to disallow it.

Power creep, as has been mentioned, is another issue, but it's easy to restrict players to the Core book and require approval for anything else. Implicit Prohibition still exacerbates the trouble with power creep as well: ([quadratically powerful Spirits] * [powercreeping possession Magi] * ([karmagen]+[not-explicitly-forbidden Initiation])) = one type of broken. Tech has a character creation restriction of availability and, for cyber-/bioware, essence. Magic doesn't generally have that availability issue.

If you look through the SR5 book for a way to break it, those Implicit Prohibitions are going to be the faults in the armor as splat books come out. LINK

As someone who mostly plays 3e these days, I can absolutely say the Priority system can result in some powerful freaking characters. While it's not as 'game-able' as some other systems, if you know how to squeeze the points and nuyen you can really get a lot of bang for the buck, particularly for an Ork or Dwarf character. I'd actually say Ork/Dwarf could be nastier under Priority than BP, especially for Mages. A Magic(30 BP), B Resources(20 BP), C Attributes(48 BP), D Race(5 BP), E Skills(27 BP), comes out to 130...even if the player took 6 points of flaws with no edges they'd be short under the BP system. Hell, metas and mages in general I'd say 'won' under Priority compared to BP-a Troll, for example, would be Race c(10 BP), Attributes D(42 BP), for a total of 129. Human magician would be Magic-Resources-Attributes-Skills, for a total of 128 BP. (FWIW, 120 BP was the general number. You could take up to 6 points of flaws for up to 6 more Build Points.)


So certain 'combinations', per se, ended up more beneficial under Priority than Build Points even in those days. THAT being said, they were at least *close*, and I will say that 3e's general creation systems(the two book systems and Becks), remain my general favorites to this day. Optimizing Priority(since we're talking about optimizing the systems) generally involved finding the best combinations for a particular build-some of which ended up better than others.


We probably use Becks most often in 3e, FWIW, which I actually found to be a bit better balanced than 4e's Karmagen, though we used Karmagen in 4e about exclusively since we didn't like BP or the Priority system in 4e. Also, we'd work together making characters and experienced people would help inexperienced ones, and we'd be on the same page for what sort of game we'd be going for so it basically cinched up every problem. Personally, while I'm on board with trying to tweak up a nice balanced system the best you can, at the end of the day I'd make sure to add the ''Look, the most important thing is the group needs to be on the same page. Then pick your chargen system.''

I think a lot of the potentially unbalancing stuff in the game falls under the category of creative interpretation of ambiguous rules, coupled with a lenient GM. Karmagen has a sidebar where allowing karma to be used for things like initiation or quickened spells is discussed, and it warns about the possible ramifications, power-wise.

Priority in SR3 was good, although the main weakness was that mundane orks and dwarves got their metatypes for free, since a D or an E for Magic were the same thing. Other than that (okay, including that, whenever I played a mundane ork or dwarf ), it worked well.

Priority in SR5 is not as good. Attributes were limited in build points, so people wouldn't spend too much just on Attributes. The trouble was, most builds, even generalist ones, tended to be at, or near, this limit. The problem this creates for Priority is that they are trying to shoehorn Attributes into different priorities, when the maximum and the minimum are almost the same.

The other problem was their whole design philosophy of "everything has a price". That is an atrocious way to design a game. Essentially, it is saying, "We will give you an annoying drawback to every option you pick for your character. We will deliberately make the game less fun for you, no matter what you play." As fluff, it is nice and gritty, if a bit trite. As a concept to build a game around, it is a very poor choice.

True. The point was more aimed at Glyph, who felt that SR4.5 had a highly flexible system, and system mastery was a fair price to pay. If that's what you want, that's fine, but there are still better alternatives out there.

Then it's a miscommunication. When I refer to Priority, I mean SR3, which I did prefer for that system. It was much less broken than BP, and much easier to use than BECKs, which was the original karmagen system. More on that later. In SR4.5, there were several systems published, including Priority. I felt all of those were crap. In SR5, I haven't experimented with the Priority system enough to feel like I know all its advantages and limitations. I'll weigh in on that when I have a better handle on it.


Are we discussing 4.5 karmagen, or a theoretical unwritten one for SR5? I can't comment on the theoretical one. However, in 4.5, there were still lots of exploitable loopholes in karmagen. Karmagen might not break in the same way that BP did, but it still broke, and just as badly in some ways.

There are many ways a mage can throw spells with impunity. This particular build used a couple of them, which I was previously unable to do in BP.


Yes, we tried to break both BP and karmagen. Karmagen ended up breaking harder than BP did, showing that the system was more broken.

That's still escalation, which means the players will respond by escalating even further. It's a vicious cycle. What's more, the players who can't keep up will get stepped on, as things rapidly spiral above their abilities. It's a nasty road to go down.

I quoted this as a reply to TJ. No, it doesn't actually forbid players from starting with initiations. It suggests that you might want to prohibit it, but it's not a by-default thing.

Absolutely. In no version of Shadowrun could the system not be gamed. The early Priority charts, however, were somewhat more resistant to breakage, especially in comparison to SR4.5. Within SR3, of the three systems (Priority, BP, and BECKS), I found Priority to be the best. It was much less prone to abuse than BP, and was much easier to use than BECKS. All three systems could be optimized, and even broken, but for SR3 Priority always seemed to be the best.

No, exaclty not. Thats the point. If you really enforce deminishing returns, the guy gaming the system will be X points better in something. But he won't get much for it ingame.
You can do it with increasing costs, deminishing returns or both.

As long as you do it that way, the result would always be the same. Even if you manage to "game" the system, your returns would not be breaking the game, because they would be quite low.
For example the guy not gaming the system would only have a 5% less chance to hit, than the guy gaming the system.

And at a side note:
Karmagen created better characters in general. With a few, special exceptions (Technomancers were one of them). But that does not mean, that the system is broken. You just get more powerful characters. Don't like it? Reduce the amount of Karma given.

On a side note:
One major problem in Shadowrun 4 was, how attributes were handled. Together with the question of how spells worked (hello increase attribute) and some special characters (for example a free spirit) you could simply build a character depending on augmentations only for attributes. (The other way was the full cyber guy)
This was bullshit at any rate. The spirit was even worse, because he had a way to increase his max.
The first option is for example gone in SR 4 by making the rules for augmentations more reasonable. Still, cyberlimbs suffer still the same general issue. A strong guy loses from getting a cyberlimb (and the weak guy gets more), that sucks. (Thats probably one of the cases, where it has to do less with deminishing returns and more with beeing a simple loophole to get around Karma costs.

That's fine in theory. In practice, however, clever players will find the loopholes, weak points, and manipulate the system to their advantage. That happens pretty much regardless of system, so it's not just karmagen. However, a diminishing return system is much more exploitable than a hard cap system.


I disagree. Technomancers, Adepts, and Mages were, in my experience, more breakable under karmagen. Significantly more powerful in some cases. And while it was theoretically possible for me to experiment further, massage the karma amount until I found a level that reliably game me what I wanted.... why should I bother?

SR3 did have its problems, that's for sure. I despised the Vehicle Combat section, for one. Cyberlimbs have been an issue in every version of Shadowrun, I had to house rule them every time.

However, because SR3 is a completely different beast than SR4.5, high attributes simply didn't mean as much. Your skill was the primary source of dice, and attributes only indirectly affected that. Your allocatable pools were based on attributes, but they were kinda averaged, so one high attribute didn't change it too much.

But because SR4.5 ran with a different dice system entirely, high attributes became even more unbalancing. Attributes now directly influences your abilities, and was one of the primary sources of dice. So, even though attribute boosting was a little harder from SR4 onwards, it was more than offset by how it increased your abilities.

Oh lordy, 3e's vehicle combat. Yeah, we kinda revamped that to be a lot more simple, I'll say that much. Cyberlimbs I will say that the later editions finally did much better than the early editions-the biggest early edition flaw was 'wait, this sorta...stereotypical 'gritty' piece of gear that is supposed to be quintessential...WHY do I need to take Resources Priority A for two cyberarms with just a few tweaks again?' Lowering their Nuyen cost did wonders. (Really, in 3e they came with the average stats +1 so if you wanted even like, a couple of points each it was a ginormous money sink. To this day I never understood why they were so expensive compared to even state of the art top line Shadowtech bioware.)

And yes-in 2e-3e, while Attributes were fairly important in their ways, they weren't as much the end-all be all. They had their effects-Reaction was affected, and Combat Pool(the latter being very nice to have), and in 3e they affected the cost of your skills...but really when you came down to it, the skill rolls were mostly the skill rolls, plus or minus some outside modifiers. Your grumpy detective with a 2 charisma could still have a 4(6)Etiquette(Street)-or a 5 Street Etiquette in 2e-and while in 3e it would have cost more skill points for that, he'd be rolling 5 dice for his thing. The very handsome and likeable elven street sam could have a 5 charisma, but his 2 street etiquette would make him a lot worse at it than the grump, where in the later editions, they'd be rolling the exact same amount of dice, only the elf could get away with throwing some 1's in other stuff and throwing 6 dice for most of the etiquette skills, where the grumpy detective would need a 4 in it.

Attribute + Skill systems were admittedly a lot easier to teach folks, but the issues they run into I feel are iffier than the issues that the other systems run into. The types of minmaxing done were different-again, there was totally minmaxing in the 3e days, but it was a different style-a big one I remember were 'even number breakoffs' in terms of attributes. Like you'd have a 5 in Quickness, Intelligence, and Willpower, and that's 15, for a 7 combat pool-do you suck up and use another Quickness point to get the 8 combat pool but get no reaction increase, or do you take the 4 willpower, keep the pool and reaction the same and maybe put the point into Body, and so on-and of course minmaxing when it comes to skills with specialization, the race bit with Orks and Dwarves in particular, etc.

But yeah, 3e priority was very solid. It gave you enough points that you didn't feel the need to wrack your brain or points-squeeze, but it at the same time didn't give you EVERYTHING you wanted at the start. 2e's was a little stingier(that priority E was a bit TOO harsh and had the whole 'Rich Street Shaman' syndrome), but it was good enough-3e's took it and ran with it. I think the only issue that I'd run into with 3e's priority was nuyen 'Damnit, this character I have comes out to 500k/150k..'



After some time with 5e-while I stand by the fact I think it's good overall, I agree here. 'Everything has a price' is good for fluff and I think even good for some crunch stuff, but when you make it the exact cornerstone it gets fatiguing and eventually gets kinda unfun. The funny thing is, everything's *always* had a price(hence me thinking it works fine for some crunch), but for some reason the price got raised. At the end of the day I sorta preferred the 'price' in the 2050-2065 timeline than later.

Which again has nothing to do with Karmagen per say. The point is, that you got from Karma to BP nearly 2 to 1. For money this factor was correctly implemented. But for the rest, the real factor was lower. (Spells went from 3 BP to 5 Karma thats not +100%, skills stayed lower unless you got up to 6. O

And your assumption of technomancers is just flat wrong. In BP increasing a complex form from 0 to 5 costs 5 BP. In Karmagen it was 1+2+3+4+5= 15 Karma. Thats one of the rare cases where the exchange of Karma to BP was higher than 2 to 1. So no, technomancers and some metatypes builds (TankTroll) where about the only once who could come out weaker than under BP.
In Short: If you needed Money, you were "equal".
If you needed Skills, Spells, and several attributes in human range, you where better off.


My fault, it should have said SR 4! The 3 was a typo...

Instead of just telling me I'm wrong, maybe you can give us some examples of how karmagen (4.5ed with eratta, or even 3rd ed Becks) was so incredibly broken compared to the other options? Unless you allowed Initiation/Submersion/Adept Power Point buys which were ALL GM DISCRETION, I just don't see it. All the moster builds I saw in 4th Ed were done with BP.

As for escalation, are the PCs just supposed to get away with everything scott free, or only engage in honorable one on one showdowns? "GM throwing more mooks at them" is not escalation, it's a secuirty force responding to a break in.

Actually... I'm also firmly behind the BECKs stuff... (IIRC that one did the racial attribute mods after buying base attributes with karma... as if they were augments... which kept all the attribute costs in line, made an 'average' strength troll cost the same in karma as an average human excepting the metatype cost).

But overall, the single biggest problem with gaming chargen comes down to one major factor. Using any system which values things differently than character advancement costs. People will game it to minimize karma expenditures later by exacting maximum 'value' up front.


The biggest problem with karmagen (as published)... is that karma costs are way out of whack. Attributes in particular are extremely undercosted for as much as they do. I think the system as a whole would do well to simply double karma awards outright... double attribute costs. Leave skills alone. IE: attributes would advance as slowly/quickly as they do now... but skills & skill groups would be much cheaper in comparison.

I tried earlier, but for one, I'm not going to dig through huge piles of junk to see if I even kept character sheets i rejected many years ago. For two, I'm not going to waste the effort trying to rebuild them. So you're going to have to accept a general description of a way-overpowered spellcaster and a significantly overpowered shooter.

I don't recall BECKS enough to remember how it worked, but I do remember that in SR3, adepts could buy PP for 20 karma. Initiations weren't necessary, so even if BECKS forbade pre-game initiation, this exploit was still possible.

Next, there is a very clear difference between realistic consequences and escalation. If the PC's manage to keep the realistic consequences to a minimal level, with little threat, that's fine. But when the only way to challenge one character is mooks-from-the-woodwork, Red Samurai cyberzombies, or heavily armed drone fleets, something has gone wrong. What's more, the other characters, who aren't as optimized, will get mowed under while the powerful one will just be sweating a little.


Again, nice theory. But the practice is, people will find the loopholes and breaking points. Karmagen had breaking points. They were different breaking points than BP, but they were still there.

Man... I keep seeing the same complaints with karmagen. To easy to break...

What is the definition of broken that you are using?

To easy to get skills or stats to high levels? Initiation or Submersion? I do not understand...

Apples to apples if all the systems (karmagen, build points, sum to ten, priority) use the SAME RULES (hard limits for skills or attributes, no initiation, etc.) for character creation only one of them removes completely the disparity between getting one attribute at 6 vs. getting two at 4 or getting a skill 8 vs. 3 at 5... (Again - just throwing numbers out, someone else can do the math)
They all allow for one or two high skills or attributes so they all break in that way. However, the after creation "virtual karma" disparity completely disappears with karmagen. Every character made with 500 karma is worth 500 karma, no more no less. That leaves the choice to get a skill at 8 or three skills at 5 up to the player and not due to a completely measurable difference in the virtual costs (after creation advancement) with any of the other systems.

Now, I will say that yes, there is a difference with how much karma to give vs. the BP or priority system but I ask that you ignore that for a minute and just look at the game if it only had one system (BP, karmagen, sum to 10 or priority) and compare it to the after character advancement system, which is the best for making characters? Again... if all of them had the SAME RULES or LIMITS for creation.

Now, I doubt that I will change any minds with this line of questioning but hopefully you will understand why I think karmagen has the least flaws for character creation.

EDIT: Also, any arguments to the point costs between the different systems are pointless. The point differences are due to a conversion error with not having a true representation of the costs when applied to different systems, like race costs. If a true costs analysis was done then you would not have build points or karmagen giving inflated points to work with.

I don't really have a horse in this race, but here's some comparisons from SR4:

If you are trying to break things for the highest shooting dice pool for a mundane you get 24 either way. (Elf Maxed Agi + Metagenic improvement + muscle toner 4 (total 12) + skill 7 + reflex recorder + smart link + specialization) It costs 178 BP or 312 karma, so to get that level of broken, it's slightly "cheaper" to go with karma if you consider karma exchange as 2:1. There's probably a few more tweaks you could make to go higher, but those will largely be other 'ware and equipment that's pretty much the same cost for either.

You can push it further by taking adept and improved ability for +2. That increases it to 193 BP or 332 karma. So in terms of the ultra focused gun bunny, the ability to break the system is pretty much the same. It gets closer if you apply the karma cost for the metatype.

How about the dodge ninja:

You can get the defense roll up to 16 (max reaction 6 + metagenic improvement + improved physical attribute Rea + combat sense 6 + improved reflexes 2) + 6 ( from dodge. That costs 321 karma and 155 BP. So again the two are roughly the same in that direction. It seems like neither one creates a major difference in terms of broken mundane characters or really offers much either way in keeping people from building these characters if they want.

Karmagen comes out more powerful than build points - Irion's analysis was dead-on. It does away with the "most value up front" min-maxing of build points, but that is a mixed blessing, because it frees players to focus on "powerful right out of the gate". Both methods of character creation have the same hard limits (one Attribute at maximum, one skill of 6 or two skills of 5 and the rest 4 or lower, Availability of 12, etc.). If you set out to maximize one thing, such as pistols skill or dodging, you will get the same numbers with either system. The difference is that karmagen is likelier to leave you enough points left over to make a more fleshed-out character. Or if you are not interested in that, you might have enough points left to get abilities to complement your main one (adding an Edge of 6 to a marksman, etc.).

I prefer karmagen for mature players who are not out to break the game. I find that players who can get what they want will often min-max less than they would under a more stringent character creation system. For more min-maxing types of players, you could always use something like Tyro's low-powered karmagen:

600 Karma with German errata, max avail. 8, no restricted gear, max natural attributes 5 + racial modifiers, max skill 3 with two 4's or one 5, max base starting cash 150k (no born rich, in debt allowed but gives no points), max magic 4, max edge 4/5 for humans, max Connection rating for contacts of 3.

This right here. The table I play at are all types who aren't out to fight each other or be the best of everything. We just want to do our thing.

And I'll totally admit myself, though-even though I typically just want to make whatever character as they are, I do find myself feeling more chafed under certain systems, and more likely to want to just sorta strike out a bit. Under a more lax system, I'm not like that at all. I think it's a little mental block sorta thing-when I feel like someone's trying to force a lot of limits on me, I want to try to break them just for a challenge-chargen starts to kinda become a 'game' for me. When you hand me a system with only some light, reasonable limitations(I mean, you couldn't purchase a skill over 6 in the old days either at chargen without Aptitude), I don't even get the urge to 'test stuff out.' It's not even that I like making OP/Win It All types, I just end up trying to bend a system more the more limits it puts on me. Like that low-power Karmagen? I'd be trying to bend that back and forth and probably end up with something more minmaxed than I would under the more powerful Karmagen(UNLESS we were specifically playing a low-power street level game, in which case I'd be fine with it.)

3e's Becks I think was a bit better balanced than 4e's Karmagen, but even then-we just were out to be able to have more freedom with the points, and preferred how the stuff cost the same in game.

I liked Becks a lot. It was ahead of its time, in that it let you buy spell points and contacts separately (rather than out of your starting money), and starting money itself was broken into increments, rather than the lurching jumps of Priority (20,000 to 90,000, or 90,000 to 400,000). I was indifferent to the philosophy behind it (making character creation more in synch with character advancement). It was the extra degree of customization it allowed that drew me in.

Broken is a relative term. Basically, I define a character as broken when it's power is significantly out of step with the others. There's no one objective point where a character becomes broken, it depends on the group as a whole.

That said, my experiments were with a group of characters that were already min/maxed heavily. Most of the karmagen characters we came up with seemed broken in relation to that.



The best?

Best for what?

Best at creating balanced characters? None of the 4.5 systems fit that bill in my book.

Easiest to use and understand? In general, I'd say priority, but the SR4.5 version was crap. Of the ones for SR4.5, BP was unfortunately the easiest to use, and I thought it was extremely dense and unforgiving.

Most in line with ongoing character advancement? Karmagen.

I didn't find any of the systems to be particularly good at anything, although some were better in some areas than others.


My experience is somewhat different. It's easier to control min/maxers under a simpler system, and more mature players are often more satisfied with simpler systems as well. Heck, mature players don't even need a system; you can simply assign stats as you see fit, and they'll be okay with that.

You should get the same numbers regardless of what creation system you are using.

In this instance karmagen is giving you to many points and therefore is unbalanced. If you reduce the karma given by 75 (100... 125...) will it be better balanced overall across multiple builds? If so then the answer is simple; the game designers gave you to many points to begin with so therefore the book value should be reduced.

If the only argument why karmagen is overpowered is because the designers gave it to many points then I do not know what to tell you except that the designers should accept that the player base may know what they are talking about and should reduce it. So far, from what I have seen, that is the main (only?) complaint of karmagen.

I will take this problem (and correct it myself at my table by reducing points) instead of the disparity between the priority/BP/Sto10 creation points and advancement costs if it gives players an equal footing in virtual costs. If a player builds a "subpar" character for 500 karma and does not have any dice pools greater than 10 and another builds a character with only 2 or 3 skills at a dice pool of 20 each for that same 500 karma the builds are still equal at 500 karma. Therefore, the one with the "subpar" build will spend in-game karma to max out 2 or 3 skills while the other will spend his karma "rounding out" his build... they even out in the end. This DOES NOT happen with the other systems.

I am not talking about any particular version of SR, only the design philosophy of the creation systems.

If you are using the same rules in regards to limits and such and assuming a true cost template regarding race, qualities, money, etc. which one gives you the best result regarding virtual cost diferences from creation to advancement, does not punish players for choosing a "subpar" choice vs. buying the best right out of the gate.

All of the systems other than karmagen do punish players for choosing a subpar choice and can vary in virtual costs by up to 200 karma in advancement costs.

There really isn't any way, at least that I can see, that you can make two build systems come out equally all of the time, when one of them uses flat costs and one of them uses incrementally increasing costs. My personal recommendation would be to use one or the other, since they are roughly equivalent but not equal. The downside of karmagen is that it is not suited for making AIs or free spirits, is unfriendly to tank builds and technomancers, and tends to create slightly more powerful characters. The upside of karmagen is that it discourages "front-loading", results in slightly more "organic"-looking characters, keeps character creation and character advancement more closely aligned, and makes much, much more viable generalist builds.

Both are very customizable, though, so it is not too difficult to tweak either one of them for an individual campaign (such as Tyro's rules I quoted earlier).


Ha! The last (unofficial) word was to raise the amount of karma to 1,000! Which, while a nice amount, is really something more suited for building high-powered prime runners than default starting characters.

Well, thats one idea. The problem here is always, what is about the rest of those possibilities. You double karma reward and you double attribute costs will lead to more karma beeing available for skills, spells, foci etc.pp. This will again have kind of an extrem effect on the balance between mundane and magical characters....
(True, at least the "I get an magic attribute as high as I want would be off the table)
But then again you would need to think about how to manage the thing with the essence loss and magic.
Because having such high attribut costs, will make it really worth to lose your essence early on. Between 3 to 4 and 5 to 6 would be a total of 20 points of Karma or 4 spells.....
And espacially metas would be in quite a hard place with such high costs, compared to other forms of investments. So I guess you should start introducing modifiers instead of just starting values. (For example for every point of essence lost, you get -1 Magic or -1 drain resistance alternating, or something like that. Metas should ignore their bonus to the attribut, when calculating the new costs etc. (which of course would make them a bit more expensive or you give humans another kind of bonus).

@glyph

Yes, hard limits are the easiest way to balance starting characters. But one should be aware of the fact, that this will lead to quite similar starting characters.


Some notes to that:
1. AIs and Free spirits do not actually have a problem with the Karma system. It just seams that there was nobody willing to sit the fuck down and write a reasonable table for the Karmacosts for all metatypes. (So it just went to BP=Karma or no costs. And all of those options are kind of silly, depending on the metatype) (Not to mention that those types can quite easy break the game. Just thing of the "I have a pact with half of the world spirit)
2. Troll Tanks: Here lies the problem in the way attribute boni are handled. If they would be handled like augmentations, just adding their value without increasing the costs, the issue would not exist. (This problem also exists ingame)
3. Technomancers have only the issue with complex forms. Which are way to expensive for what they do, espacially compared to spells. (And this problem also exists ingame)

You do realize that the designers think they screwed up the Karma Allocation for SR4A, Right? Jason has gone on record as saying it should be 1000 Karma (ludicrous, I know, but there you go).

Edit: Looks like Glyph covered that one.

I'm not sure I get what you're asking.

While I dislike how all the SR4.5 systems work in practice, I don't think for a moment that the designer's philosophy was "How can we screw the players?" Every system is going to have optimal and suboptimal choices, and is going to encourage certain options and discourage ("punish") others. Karmagen does it too, it just does it in different ways. I don't think the theory behind any one system is superior to the others.

Besides which, karma totals aren't an accurate measure of character ability. What matters is how that karma is spent. More specifically, in SR4.5, power is measured in direct relation to the size of your dice pool.

Regardless of which build systems you prefer, the biggest problem with Shadowrun in my opinion is that it is incredibly difficult for new players to get into. There are so many trap options and straight up bad deals in character generation that you are rewarded for having complete system mastery. This is the only game I play so I have no problem being really into the rules, knowing what obscure forum post to reference to get something working, knowing what printing of books have the correct rules fixes, etc. to understand how the game should be run, but I can't expect anyone else to care as much as I do and that's a big problem.

Catalyst expects everyone to come into this game with years of experience, and then offer no help when their own rules are incomplete or contradictory.

It does certainly feel that way a lot of the time when going through parts of the book.