So, before we dig into a big ol' plate of Troll meat (ew), we first have to talk a bit about design philosophy. There are a couple of key phrases that are invoked in the design process that try to bring constant color through stuff. You have:

"Everything has a price"
"Choice is good, auto-include is bad"
and
"Honor the old material"

(I'm paraphrasing here, but it's close enough.)

The first one is simple: Things should have a cost. The bigger the benefit, the bigger the cost. This cost could be in many forms ... money, Karma, Essence, Drain, whatever, but getting a benefit for free is a bad thing. Small benefits have small costs, big benefits have big costs. At some point, people need to hit a wall where they can't, or won't, pay the price. This is a good thing. There are ots of places that this can come up; A spirit pact where the spirit wants you to, say, eat a bag of kittens, a rare prototype weapon that costs a cool million Nuyen, an awesome cyber body that costs 5.95 of your Essence, leaving you little more than a brain in a really cool jar ... are you willing to pay what it takes to get these things? Some people say yes, some say no. Finding the right balance is tricky, but needs to be done.

Which leads to #2: Choice is good. Do you want this big loud pistol with a small ammo reserve or do you want this easily-hidden small pistol that does less damage but is sneaky? Do you want a sword, which uses no ammo but requires you to be way over there, or sporting rifle with really long range? These are choices, letting people tailor what they want to do, and that's good. If you instead introduce, say, a high-powered pistol that's also easy to hide, silent, and has a big ammo reserve, well you just eliminated a choice as it's clearly better than all other options. "Well of *course* you dumpstat your Strength to a 1, then get a single cyberarm with Str and Agility 6. I mean DUH." <-- This is an auto-include, which is bad. To eliminate this, you have to make one option better (Strength is more important?), the other option worse (Cyberlimbs now cost, uh, 4 essence!) or somewhere in between. Adjusting these numbers up or down is where the art comes in, as you try to figure out where the right balance to make different builds *attractive* but not *seductive*, IE, Some concepts will go some way and others another way, rather than one build to rule them all.

And then there's #3. Don't change old stuff unless you HAVE to. If you arbitrarily go around, turning the Predator into an assault rifle and make Elves half a meter tall with meter long ears, people will be up in arms and rightly so! Changing older information is to be avoided if at all possible. If you simply have to do it, it can be done, but you'd better be prepared to bring one heck of an arguement to the guys above.

"So, Wak. Half meter tall Elves? Replacing the way we've done Elves for over twenty years? Let's hear it."
"Well, uh. Lidda was a great selling point for D&D art?"
*booted to the curb*

There were a lot of topics that people complained about for years, in SR 4 but also older editions, and people upstairs noticed. Stick-n-Shock ruling everything was a known problem that had to get fixed. Non-augmented adepts simply falling so far behind the augmented adept curve needed to be handled. There were other issues, major and minor, that were handled during the cleanup and the move from 4th to 5th. Lots of subsystems got tried out, tweaked, changed, tossed out, and new ones moved into their place. Some rule debates got hot, with some passion being thornw around as cases were made for X and Y. EVentually, higher levels made calls as they are supposed to do, everyone got on the same page, and while there was some under-breath grumbling about a thing or two, everybody lined up behind the official word and moved ahead with that. These are essential things and, luckily, the Shadowrun team is filled with professionals who understand that you don't take your ball and go home if you lose a battle. Yeah, you'll still find a grumble or two, but it's mild and no one is talking revolution or whatever.

So, that brings us to Trolls.

Trolls are a defining element of Shadowrun's history. They're big and beefy and COOL, you have the horn thing, the general massiveness, the tusks... they're just cool. Everybody loves 'em. For two editions, they were minor players at best, due to how expensive it was to be a Troll and how minor the benefits were (High Strength in an edition where Strength was a dumpstat = bad investment) ... this changed in 3rd edition, where the previous 1-2 edition focus on humanity was changed, Metatypes made easier to take in chargen, and sample archetypes completely flipped from around a 15-3 human majority to a 14-2 meta-majority. 4th edition kept this going, again with a majority-meta bit of character samples and cheap metaforms.

One thing that came out of 4th was the "Anorexic Ork/Beanpole Troll" build, where people would take the meta type for cheap, keep the minimum attributes they gave (Body and Strength), then boost everything else. This was efficient as it cost roughly double to get the Body and Strength normally as it did to just take "Ork" and you got metavision on top of that. The stereotypical "Big dumb Troll" was replaced by a weedy Troll magician. Was this intentional or was it just efficiency fallout?

So, when it came to Trolls, a few things stood out. One is that in the earlier methods of chargen, being a Troll was crazy costly. Attributes were being rebalanced to make some more alluring than before, Strength in particular was getting upgraded, Charisma was made more important especially when cheap tech ways of boosting it were taken out, and getting the cost for Trolls right was a real bear.

Trolls, and even moreso Orks, have an extra layer in them which depends on the game. In some groups, "Walking while tusked" is enough to reason to be pulled aside, frisked, and made to produce a valid SIN pretty much anywhere on the street, especially in high-class areas. In otehr games, nobody gives a hoot and you can find Troll bankers in suits, reading paperwork over teensy glasses while in the middle of a Shiawase building. If you made Trolls cheaper due to racism, the other games would see a big break in Trollcost. If you didn't factor it in, then the games where "Spread 'em" was the norm would grumble about having paid so much for a Metatype then get harassed *constantly* ... it might not be worth it.

You also had to factor in the new design concepts... should the big dumb Troll be encouraged and players rewarded for going that way, or should the new model Troll be embraced and the old cast aside? Was "Troll" a character build in and of itself, or did you need to be able to say "Troll Samurai" or "Troll Mage" with barely a blip? Troll bonuses were *so* large that they deformed chargen. Should Trolls be trimmed, their bonuses made smaller, so as to be less-deforming? If you do that, do you further adjust Orks and Dwarves down, to make room for the new smaller Troll mods? How do these attribute reductions line up with older books and established canon? If we take half a meter of height off of Trolls, take away muscle mass, and make them cheaper, will the Shadowrun fanbase be willing to accept them?

Lots of decisions to make and the echo of it could cover everything. If you want to play around with (non-official) numbers yourself, here on Dumpshock there's a post about someone's home-brewed Karmagen system, where they go through and take a stab at the assorted costs of each Metatype. Just taking a Troll in that system eats up about a qurter of your karma. Is that good? Bad? Should the cost be lower? Higher? Someone in a later post will probably link to that thread, and you can discus the pros and cons here. You can also talk about the official rules and see how moving Troll priority around could make a dent, or about changing Troll stat mods, or, well, whatever really. It's Dumpshock. Things wander.

Getting the balance just right isn't easy, to say the least. There's a thread or two on here about "Troll combat monsters" and how they can be made into giant damage-soaking machines. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is it, perhaps, a good thing that's been taken too far, or a sign of when a GM has to step in and swat a player's hand and go, "No! Try to match up with your team members." Should the game put more faith in players and GMs to do police themselves or should teh game try to do some of that work for the players, since newer GMs might not be willing, or able, to do it in a way veterans can?

Tons of variables.

My participation will be spotty for a bit, since I have a day job to deal with, but I'll be here where I can and I'll talk about what I can, but, again, there are NDA issues here and the simple fact that I'm a freelancer, not a design team member, means that there's plenty of stuff I don't know. I might have had a suggestion here or there, but it was never my rule to write and never my call to make; that's a burden of responsibility way over my pay grade. Still, this is a topic that's come up quite a few times, so, I figured we should go ahead, get one big thread on it, and chew the fat for a while. I hope that everything can be kept civil and that criticism, which will flow, could be constructive where possible. I always suggest that if you want to point out a problem, you should try and make a stab at presenting a correction as well, but that's different than just grappling with an issue and discussing it. It should also be noted that a discussion, where a problem is disected, pulled apart, looked at from several angles, and examined, is different than a debate, where one person tries to move opinion to their own.

I think that's all the disclaimers that I have for now. Everybody put on your thinking caps. It's time to talk Trolls.

funny. orks with minimum body and strength were pretty common in 4th edition as far as i could tell. i didn't see much of that for trolls, though. generally speaking, in 4th edition strength was pretty much still a dump stat for most builds (with the exception of stuff like troll bow adepts or throwing adepts).

most of the trolls i saw in 4th were making full use of their increased strength and body, not just dumping them as low as they could go.

Orks were, point for point, the Master-Race in SR4.
They cost 25? or so points to be played but got all included, 45 points of bonus stuff out of that.

Making Trolls weaker is making Trolls obsolete.
Trolls were always meant to be the big, hulking, not neccessarely dumb, but not as quick brute.
If you take away the usefullness of that, then yes, all in all, you have made trolls now usesless.

Under SR3 the Combat-Monster-Trolls reigned supreme, because heavy weapons and all close combat aside from the whip was linked to STR.
Not the actual number of dice is most cases, but the cost to increase these skills up to hillarious levels.
In SR4 that got changed to agility and suddenly, yes, Trolls were useless in these roles, because ELVES WERE BETTER THAN THEM.
Because the linked attribute, which also gives dice for the rolls, is now agility. AND ELVES GET A BONUS IN THAT WITH NO DRAWBACKS!
And the change in how damage soaking and armor and implants worked only made this worse and worse each time and time again.


Anyway, thanks for actually talking to us about this Wak. I see CanRay was right when he asked us to be nice to you because you are good people.

Trolls being stuck in Priority A or B is frustrating and only makes the limitations of a Priority system even more glaring. What if you want high Attributes and lots of augmentations? You know, like any normal, typical street samurai build? This kind of encourages exactly the kind of build that is most potentially unbalancing - the augmented combat machine with low mental stats and bare-bone skills outside of combat.

It all comes down to "Everything has a price", which an atrocious design philosophy. I don't have a problem with things having a cost (although I feel like some things should be "bargains", such as augmentations and magic, to showcase the game's transhumanistic themes). But in SR5, that philosophy seem to be implemented as "Anything good has to have some kind of drawback to make it unfun".

Still, compared to SR5's main problems, trolls are a comparatively minor issue. You can still make combat monsters, combat/some other specialty types that are only slightly inferior to their human counterparts, and against-the-stereotype builds such as mages that are suboptimal but playable. There is less overall versatility, but that is priority character creation for you. I do like that humans are more competitive with the other metatypes now.

I'd like to highlight something important here: everything already has a cost. Just making a single choice as to which priority goes where has implicit costs, and I have a long diatribe on how this is a stupid stated design goal, and balance itself should always be a fundamental implicit design goal. However with this as an explicit design goal, it leads to things like the "drawbacks to make it unfun" by writers who shouldn't be messing around with systems because they cannot recognize there are already implicit costs to everything. The question isn't "does X have a cost," but rather "is the current cost of X too little, too much, or good enough?"
Or don't have cyberlimbs replace attributes in the first place? The simple answer would be that all cyberlimbs are autocorrected to the individual's body type (ie has the same stats as the character) and must be reinforced (read: buy additional modifications that fill capacity) to exceed that, up to the augmented attribute limit. The amount of design fuck up in cyberlimbs is quite astounding, but cyberlimb rules have always been screwed up, so let's honor the old material =/
There is always, always, going to be one build, or a certain pattern of builds, that are mathematically most efficient. The problem is that people have different tolerances of what attractive is, versus what seductive is. If the designer has an idea of what they want to be optimal, what their tolerance level for non-optimal, and produces a system that accomplishes both goals... there wouldn't be this dance of attractive vs seductive.
This is entirely because the rule book does not set any expectation of the level nor the frequency of experiencing racism that a PC should have to deal with. RAW sets the basis for our shared understanding of Shadowrun, but gives little in the way of guidance on racism within the SR world. There is literally no same page that all the players can get on, game mechanic wise. At best there's a sidebar on pg 139, that basically says "make it up!" or the Prejudiced flaw... which ironically would be one hell of an advantage for the orc or troll.

Ultimately, I think it's because of the somewhat "taboo" nature of the subject matter is what causes the problem. SR, for all of it approaches the more adult themes, never quite fully embraces them. The developer needs to make a decision: should PCs expect racism? If so, give the point break, if not... don't. What they shouldn't do is pussyfoot around being non-committal about the whole thing. At worst, set a normal cost but add a note to the GM that says that if they're going to make "walking while tusked" a thing, they should give the player a few extra widgets of some type for that.
For something that takes a B priority, that sounds about right. The problem isn't the costs of the attributes and advantages, it's the valuation thereof. There is a difference in value between agility and strength, yet the game ascribes to them an equal cost. Trolls are costed under the assumption that all attributes have equal weight, but the system does not back that up. You can't talk about whether the cost of trolls is too much or not, if the game's assumptions about the values of differing attributes is flawed. The system either needs to have differing costs for attributes (please god no), or increase the relative value of Str as to other attributes. SR5 tried to increase the value of Str, and it's partly there, but it's become a "good enough?" stat, as in, get it high enough so that your physical limit isn't horrible and move on. Usually this has settled at 4 for my characters, as it coincidently is the threshold for an additional point of recoil compensation. Trolls automatically come with five, which is still higher than most other characters ever put into strength. So this is, as Jaid has put it in another thread a "bad investment of resources." The player is being forced to pay for something they'd never choose to pay for if they chose a different option, at an equal cost as other attributes, for an attribute that has suspect value. Increase the value (not cost) of Strength at levels between 5 and maxed out for melee purposes, and trolls might not be a bad deal.

The problem isn't with Trolls, it's how the system behind the curtain is screwed up, but from an end user's perspective, all we see is "OMG, TROLL!"
It's a thing that has nothing to do with Trolls, and everything with all of the other stacking modifiers to the soak roll. The Troll soaking machine is just a version of the Pr0nomancer taken to a different focus by trying to get all the different stacking soak modifiers you can instead of the seduction modifiers. Trolls are literally only five dice more than humans, but there's no huge outcry against the humans with 25 dice to soak, but that's just as possible as the 30 dice Troll. It might even be worse if they've got a maxed edge attribute too. Again the problem isn't with Trolls, it's with the system behind them. Nerf the stacking modifiers and bring them under the Augmented Attribute Limit rule and poof... no more 30 dice soak monsters.
When the system has to put faith in the players to fix it's own mistakes... why are the players buying that system? Furthermore, when Missions is an established tent pole of the business plan, introducing vagarities into RAW eliminates the shared basis of expectations, which directly undermines Missions.

SR can't expect a game based upon hand-wavey GM rule decisions to produce uniform playing experiences at conventions. Trying to have it both ways only leads to heartache. Pick one way and be done with it.
Extrapolating to 5th, I just don't see it continuing though, specifically because of that "bad investment of resources" as you put it, and because, generally speaking, swapping the meta and attribute priorities between human and whatever race generally end up a wash, total attribute point wise, but the human has a choice of where to put those attributes, and the meta races don't. So unless one were going to buy those attributes anyways or go above the human range for that attribute, it's usually a bad deal for the meta.

actually, the other metas pull out even for the most part if you consider all attributes to be equal in value, give or take (including special attributes).

that isn't necessarily a safe or valid assumption, mind you, but if you do make it, well, elf costs priority D, comes with 0 special, 2 charisma, and 1 agility. at priority D, humans come with 3 special attribute points.

this trend generally continues on up the line as well, actually.

Err, yeah, that's what I meant, sorry if I was unclear. It's the being forced to take attributes that the player would not have chosen to take, that makes metas an overall lesser choice, unless the player was going to exceed the human maximum in an attribute.

for clarity, by "other metas", i actually mean "not trolls".

trolls do actually suffer a loss in total attribute points, compared to the priority cost;

that is, the difference between attributes B and attributes A is 8 points, while the difference between troll and human at lowest priority possible is actually 7 points (troll has +4 body and strength but -1 edge relative to a human at lowest priority).

and also, as i've said elsewhere, i feel like the fact that it's such a large purchase is the real kicker. i don't feel like there are very many concepts other than "completely uncharismatic character" where a charisma of 3 (ie racial minimum for an elf) would be completely out of the question, and agility of 2 or better is probably in the vast majority of characters made. in contrast, there are many builds where you would seldom buy 5 body, and even more builds where you would likely only plan on 2-3 for strength, i feel.

even orks and dwarfs have minimums at a place where i feel almost anyone would have considered that purchase regardless.

so not only are trolls losing the most versatility (with most other metas having attributes in a range where the investment would have been considered anyways), but they actually also lose out on raw attribute points as well.

Anorexic Ork: Definitely a thing, since it granted usable BOD/STR with cheaper-than-normal investment. But I never saw any Beanpole Trolls, and neither does it sound effective in theory: Body and Strength clearly have diminishing returns for "support" characters, you don't want to be stuck in an absolutely emaciated body but once you can keep up with the average human there's little to be gained from increasing the stats further. 4/3 is fine for mages or TMs, paying twice the BP/Karma and a hefty cap on CHA for going up to 5/5 just does not sound worth it.

IMO, playing a troll was a clear "I like the concept" thing in SR4. Playing a character exclusively reliant on BOD and STR was never terribly effective, it has always been something you did because the concept "big dumb bruiser" sounded cool no matter the disadvantages. Playing a troll who goes against the stereotype obviously requires sucking up the low mental stats and the high race cost, again something you did because the concept of "Dr. Dr. Troll" sounded fun, not because it was particularly effective. (Funny thing is, Dr. Troll was still more workable than Shaman Troll).

I have seen it, mostly for troll mages/spellcasters but it was a thing. The reasoning was that since Body gave you extra hit points, if you overcast and took physical damage, it was less likely to knock you out. It also helped a lot with the "geek the mage first" tactics intelligent opposition adopted. Carefully done, it was definitely more effective than some magical builds I encountered.

and yet, orks could do that 90% as effectively but with a noticeably lower cost (especially when you consider how much there is to invest into being a magician, all of it good options), and with less of a hit to their mental attribute maximums.

It depended a lot on your goals for the build. If you wanted to take damage effectively, troll was the way to go. Orks could be better at avoiding combat damage, although they ended up about the same in drain resistance dice, so the extra hit points mattered a lot. Honestly, I never tried either build, as my design philosophies usually rely on avoiding damage, not taking it.

It also depended on which build system you used. Under 4.5's karmagen, trolls and their attribute bonuses were effectively free, you could build a beanpole for nothing.

you could build a beanpole troll for nothing, or you could build an anorexic ork and come out better than even, while still having enough strength even after you dump it.

because let's face it, overall strength really sucked in SR4. free strength is only really worthwhile to a handful of builds, most of which had inherent drawbacks to overcome (like the fact that some random strength 1 chump with a shotgun was probably doing more damage at a greater range than you).

and not only does the anorexic ork not cost as much and still get more than enough of what you wanted anyways, it comes with fewer other drawbacks too.

seriously, i saw lots of anorexic ork builds in SR4. mostly, anyone who made a troll was doing it because they liked trolls, not because they were excited about getting 4 points of strength for free.

Not in 4.5 karmagen.

Being an ork or troll was free. So did starting your stats at base. Which meant a troll had a starting Body of 5, plus dermal armor, without spending a single point of karma. An ork started with a body of 4, and would need to spend karma to match the troll's body-- more, if he wanted to match his dermal armor as well.

In addition, the troll would have higher starting attributes, because he could spend more on attributes. A troll could spend 20 more karma on attributes than the ork. That's enough to give him an advantage in mental attributes.

Not with the Errata it wasn't (you paid BP in Karma Cost).

My experience with the errata version of Karmagen has been that most of my builds at 750 karma come out better than they would with 400 BP - and that is for the optimized builds thematically suited for 400 BP. Generalists come out even better. Trolls, if you give them high Body and/or Strength, tend to come out a lot closer to the 400 BP mark.

In the original karmagen, trolls (and some other metatypes) were a lot more broken, because they didn't have to pay for their metatype, and on top of that, the lower multiple for buying up Attributes made the exponential costs much less of a factor. Look at the sasquatch example, an awakened character with a Body of 10 - and lots and lots of other stuff.

I do agree that the Generalist comes out MUCH better in Karma Gen than BP. Never really tried to build a Specialist with it, though.

Which is why most people agreed it needed fixing. Sadly, the ones who didn't are rather highly placed http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=37489


Anyway, let's have a look at what trolls actually get apart from the so-so attributes:
BBB:
Thermo vision, certainly useful for mages, but everybody else can get it elsewhere.
1 Armor. Wasn't hugely exciting before, with damage being doubled in 5th it's irrelevant
+1 Reach, in other words +1 die (or at least one less die lost when the other guy has longer Reach) in melee
Double lifestyle cost
Running slower due to having longer legs, which hopefully resulted in somebody getting trout-slapped
R&G:
Can't be caught by a regular net gun
Carry the Fluid-Motion Ram without help

And that's it. Essentially, pay double LS cost because your size is relevant everywhere, but get a few fringe benefits to show for it. Trolls are extremely tall, it makes sense that this fact plays a role throughout their lives -- but why does the size never play a positive role? They can casually look down at a crowd they're in, pull up themselves to a first-floor (second for you 'muricans ) window, and wrap their hands around a pistol grip holding a rifle magazine. Though I admit that "a bonus here, a little there" isn't terribly elegant, at least it would give trolls something.

iirc, the armour isn't even compatible with certain skin-based cyberware/bioware mods (specifically, the ones that give you armour).

however, reach is slightly better than just +1 die. it also lets you remove 1 die from your opponent. since your hits, not your net hits, are capped by your limit, that means that taking 3 dice away from your opponent is more powerful than adding 3 dice to your own, though how much of a difference that makes depends greatly on your dice pool (if you have a dice pool of 12 and a limit of 7, it's pretty close to identical benefit... if you have a dicepool of 16 and a limit of 5, there is a rather noticeable difference, though).

but again, that's only a major concern for a melee build for two reasons:

1) most non-melee builds don't care about their melee dice pool anyways
2) most non-melee builds won't have the dice pool to hit their limits anyways

now obviously, even for non-melee builds having reach is better than not having reach... unless getting that reach costs you something else that would have been better.

oh, and while it is non-ideal, thermal vision isn't exactly hard to get in cybereyes either. and really, some magicians in shadowrun do stand to gain quite a bit by getting 1 essence worth of cyber anyways (for example, +2 logic is worth +2 drain dice for certain traditions)

@Sengir:
Technically, no, they can't pull themselves up, due to how hillariously useless STR is for actually lifting stuff . .
if i remember these numbers correctly, most Trolls won't be able to pull themselves up anywhere. And technically, seeing how their LEGS have to actually carry the same weight with the same STR rating, they are not even capable of standing up . .

Wheelchair Trolls?

You missed that being taller means your limit for vertical jumping is higher. (??)

Your Limit is not any different, just the Step at which it applies. If you have a Vertical Jump of 2 Meters, and your reach gives you a 4.3 Meter Starting Point, your end point is understandably higher than the Human who starts at 2.5 Meters with the same Vertical Leap.

There is a difference between doing a pull-up and lifting a box weighting as much as yourself above your head

Yeah. And I can't do either.

I can do a few pull-ups or pull myself (slightly below 70 kilos) over an obstacle at that height, but the last time I tried lifting a 50 liter keg I clearly would have needed to burn some edge. Google says the empty weights 12 kilos, 50+12 < 70, so I should have done it, right?

I'm >100kg (103kg as of my home scales 40 minutes ago) and I routinely pick up and throw people of similar weights (Judo and catch wrestling, though it's technique in there and I'm considerably better at sacrifice throws than any of the big slams people like so actually lifting that weight off the floor basically doesn't happen). But I can't do even a single pull up unaided and can't lift a barbell of that size off the floor, let alone above my head.

Core muscle mass, itty bitty arms and shoulders.

Oh...err...and a little layer of jiggly insulation

mine also doubles as an emergency food supply ^^

I always loved it when Chiun from the Destroyer series in one of the novels spun a tale of how the Sumo bulk was an intentional effect developed as a counter to pressure point attacks being used by many MA's.

Remo later goes up against a Sumo and in the early stages of the fight is getting slapped around as his nerve strikes don't really connect through the blubber as well as blunted a lot of the harder straight on punches and kicks.

Yes it doesn't entirely work that way, but still it can be fun to think of it as less jiggly and more anti-ninja

Yeah I did the math once based on what i lift and apparently I have a 5 body and 6 strength. Don't get me wrong I do go to the Gym and heavy lift but I'm a middle aged fat guy, I'm not even close to being near the peak of human perfection.

The numbers kind of work in my mind if I was thinking about what you can lift with near zero fatigue. Your bread and butter work for an hours straight lifting it type weights. The you put an 8 hour day in lifting weights like that constantly type of thing. Hard labor and fatiguing due to the time, but no where near your max lift.

sadly its described as max lift. Which by the way that should be another racial trait of trolls, something like they can lift and carry twice what others can lift based on their attributes.

In the real world, sumos are also scary fast. No match for a Master of Sinanju, of course, but they've caught many a martial artist by surprise by how fast they can move.

The big problem with trolls since 4.x is that they have a Quickness penalty. In previous editions, it made sense, since Quickness didn't directly factor into your offensive dice. It did affect your combat/dodge pool, which makes sense in that something that big is going to have a harder time dodging an attack. But leaving that penalty in as a legacy rule means that trolls are going to be slow and clumsy, something that isn't true in the real world. Big people can be just as fast and just as accurate as bantamweight fighters.

At least that is slightly ameliorated in SR5. Since augmented maximums are a straight +4, trolls max out at 9, compared to 10 for a human; this is better than the 7 vs. 9 in SR4 (you wouldn't think it from the sucky Agility scores of all of the troll archetypes, though - an Agility of 2 or 3 for a combat-oriented character is pretty pitiful). Plus, skills go higher and can thus be a bigger factor in the dice pool.

I still don't know why trolls went from having a higher movement rate (I think that was pretty consistent through the first four editions, although I could be wrong), to having a lower movement rate. I also don't get why they still use Strength for the running skill, but have Agility determine the base movement rates.

Though this is irrelevant to trolls, one other reason that strength is a dump stat is the fact that it is no longer coupled to armor capacity. In SR4 I needed to have a strength of at least 3 in order to don the eminently serviceable armor vest. In SR5 I can dump strength down to 2 safely.

Trolls, of course, were way over any reasonable armor capacity limit in SR4. So the decoupling of armor in 5 only allows other people to more easily catch up to their soak pools.

For certain definitions of safe. The Limit importance of Strength, which amongst other things includes implications for things like Knockdown, are important.

In SR4, armor encumbrance was determined by Body. In SR5, Strength is used for determining how many points you can get from armor accessories without being encumbered. Also, remember that Strength is no longer halved when determining damage, so an augmented troll can do significantly more damage in hand-to-hand combat. Despite it being marginally more useful, though, Strength is still a dump stat for non-combat builds (and a lot of combat builds).

To be fair, Logic and Charisma are very common dump stats for a lot of builds. The troll penalty for those are not an issue for many troll character concepts.

Trolls also get the neat option of getting a cyberarm with Strength 14 quite cheaply without having to spend those 200+ karma on maxing their natural strength. Add spurs and you have 17P AP-3 melee weapon that is pretty awesome.

I don't see a problem forcing trolls to pay for their stats. They still get 5 to start with cheaper (not for free since priority A/B is not free in any way,shape or form) and they do not need to spend lots of karma on Exceptional Attribute or go for the most expensive cyberware to get good strength.

Glyph, good catch. That's what I get for trying to bridge editions by memory. I looked back at some old sheets and, indeed, found that strength is firmly fixed at 2 while body is 3 in a variety of non-combat builds. In fact, the only character I can find with a high strength is a mobility adept (an ork), who needed it for the running skill. Even my hand-to-hand monsters tended to default to shock gloves because of the much better ROI in terms of BP.

RHat, fair point about knockdown. In SR4, my choice of boosting body for additional armor also boosted knockdown resistance directly, so I agree that strength is more valuable in SR5 in that way.

Surukai, given that trolls are priority A or B, they pay through the nose for that extra strength. Those priority slots are _much_ more valuable for skills or attributes.

In fact, that's the big reason I haven't built trolls in SR5: priority A/B are so much more valuable for skills and attributes. I think Glyph has the right of this one and the screwy arrangement of priorities is to blame. Umidori suggested dropping the required priority to C in the other thread, that seems like a winning house rule to me.

But, dropping trolls to C might make them too good (I am under the impression that they are fine now)

Troll has +8 attribute points (+4 strength, +4 body)

Going from Human E, Attributes B gives 2 for metatype (+1 edge, +1 for human E for special attributes) + 20 from priority

total 22

Going from Troll B , ATtributes E gives troll 8 + 12, or 20 total.

Human gains 2 attributes, but does not have +1 die melee, +1 armor, thermographic vision.


With A/E instead troll has 8+5+12 = 25, A/E human has 26. So it depends on where you put yourself.

It looks like a small but reasonable cost to be a troll. You loose 1-2 attribute for your armor and reach.

Dropping troll to a C would make trolls flat out superior instead, that does not fit the "at a cost" thinking at all in my opinion.


Compare with Orc

Orc is worth 5 (+3 body, +2 strength). C attributes is 16, E attributes is 12, Human is worth 2 (+1 edge and E human has 1 point while C orc has 0).

Orc is too 1 or so attribute point behind a human. Just like the troll. That looks and sounds pretty good to me.

Elf D/E, Human 16, Elf 15. Once again, elf at lowest tier is 1 attribute behind human (But benefit from best offensive attribute and best mage stat).

Dwarf C/E human is 18, Dwarf is 18, on par with human at C/E combo.


So, my question is, pragma, if no other race has a major advantage in attribute sum to humans, why should trolls suddenly get one?
I understand the will to make a non-strength-monster troll characters but buffing trolls only makes the strength-monster characters even worse.

Strength did not figure into Armor Capacity in SR4A. It was Body x 2.

EDIT: As others pointed out later in the Thread. *sigh*

@Surukai
Did you factor into your calculations the fact that Trolls get hit very hard with lowered attribute maximums as well or not?
And the fact that getting a + to Bod and STR simply ain't worth as much as you would think from the numbers. Basically, they pay for mostly useless attribute points.

Body is useful, it gives much needed recovery. (Basically heath and mana regen are both depending on body)

And, if you don't have any use for Strength and Body, Troll is not for you. It's like complaining that a rigger laying inside his cocoon has no use for agility or Charisma and therefore have bad value from being Elf. It is true, but irrelevant. Elves are still amazingly good for a huge number of character concepts.


I did not factor in the lower attribute max for troll because I did not factor in the higher attribute max they have. A troll has

+8 total higher attribute max, and -5 total lower attribute max (-2 charisma, -1 agility, -1 logic, -1 intuition).

The positive quality for having a higher attribute max costs 14 karma

The negative quality in SR4 (runners companion) for having a LOWER attribute max only gave 5BP (= -10 karma)

Even if they are worth the same, a total +8 -5 is still +3 for the troll, and in terms of qualities 8*14 karma - 5 * 10 karma = +62 karma in favor for the troll. (Note: the negative quality doesn't exist in SR5, I used the one from SR4 here instead)

That is why I did not factor this.

there's a big difference between the elf rigger and the troll that is anything other than a melee-focused tank build.

for starters, there's cost. the elf only invests priority D. this is quite frankly a very minor investment. whatever you were thinking of putting into priority D instead isn't going to lose much, if at all (in the case of special) by dropping it to E.

secondly, while many builds may not need massive amounts of those attributes, having a minimum of 2 agility and 3 charisma is actually fairly reasonable for almost any build. the most likely to be dumped is charisma, but the thing is, not having a 1 charisma is actually quite nice; it means you can default on charisma-based skills, which means that you don't have to invest points into the various social skills just to be able to even try at all. almost any shadowrunner can make use of skills like negotiation, con, intimidate, etc.

in contrast, the troll is paying a huge amount. priority A or B are major investments. and while the troll may get roughly as much raw attributes out of the deal, the simple fact is that they are losing out on versatility, and the attributes that they gain are not what most would consider to be a good investment. almost any build *could* reasonably accommodate a minimum of 2 agility and 3 charisma, because you get a fairly significant benefit out of your investments there; lots of skills are based on those attributes, and in many cases those skills are ones that you are almost guaranteed to need at some point (stealth, various weapon skills, various social skills, etc). very few builds would otherwise choose to invest in a minimum 5 strength and body, especially the strength.

so the elf gets attributes that are useful in almost any character in low quantities but it costs next to nothing, while the troll gets attributes that few characters need in large amounts, but are forced to take them in large amounts at full price, plus suffer some additional drawbacks while gaining some benefits which are frequently not relevant in the slightest (thermal vision and reach are not worth much for most characters, the armour is nice but not *that* nice and doesn't stack with everything).

the only characters that make efficient use of troll attributes are those that need high values in both strength and body, and even then only if they're going beyond the maximum attributes an ork can fit in (if it's possible to reach with an ork, you're better off just making an ork, because priority C is a great deal less painful than priority B). and those are primarily going to be melee tanks, or bow/throwing adept tanks.





also, on a side note, you can't get a troll cyberlimb with strength 14. the best you can get is 13, because the customization can't exceed racial max, and the augmentation only goes up to 3. secondly, availability and cost means that even if you could get a strength 13 limb, it isn't going to be low cost, quite likely not available at chargen iirc. if it is available at chargen, you probably won't be able to buy much, if any, agility in it.

however, perhaps most importantly, your augmented maximum as found somewhere in the depths of the character creation chapters isn't the same as your racial augmented maximum (i'm afb and have no desire to dig through the discussion Cain and I had regarding the value of trolls to find where he cited it... but i think it was in the 90-100 page area). it's your attribute +4. so you especially cannot get that cyberlimb at low cost, because doing so requires that you actually have a natural strength of 10 (or, to get the actual highest strength possible troll cyberlimb, you technically only need a 9 natural strength, since the customization rules do explicitly allow you to customize higher than your own strength).

Not really equivalent - it's a LOT easier to play an Elf against type than it is a troll, and the design MUST allow for people playing the characters against type. The cost may be reasonable for playing to type, but if it's unreasonable for playing against type a problem still exists.

Charisma touches upon another problem of trolls: That being a shaman (which I think fits trolls far better than Hermeticism) or even a completely isolated TM requires an above-average "persuasiveness and charm". When the antisocial hermit (not our hermit ) runs around with CHA 6 that's stupid. When the antisocial troll hermit doesn't work because trolls are capped at CHA 4, that's a system failure.

If they felt the need to use priority, I wish they had removed metatypes from the priority table entirely and found a way to balance the metatypes, like bonus skill points or something. The problem with A or B is it removes far too many options as you end up devoting 2 of your key priorities to one thing your attributes. Sure you can dump attributes to E or D as a troll but it kind of defeats the purpose of being a troll as you just end up with A/B attributes and if you bump up the Troll stats you really have to handicap the rest. You are forced into pretty much giving up things like resources or magic because if you take those you cripple skills or vice versa. No matter the metatype you always have to cripple something, but other races have more options to cripple things that don't effect their concept much. Trolls pretty much always cripple something core to most character concepts.

And let us not forget how long the Troll Combat Mage has been an archetype. If you're going to have examples and artwork of trolls doing magic in the source material, why make trolls so bloody terrible at being mages due to their crippling mental attribute caps? Allowing a troll to be race priority C would do little to help this.

In 3E you could get around the worst of the mental attribute restrictions ( for a shaman or conjuror at least) by using metavariants. Fomori used to drop the charisma penalty (and lose the dermal deposits) in exchange for one less point of strength and body. (They did not have any magic resistance, but a higher than usual percentage of the Fomori population were awakened.) In 4E those stat adjustments vanished, but the fluff still described them as more attractive. Unless 5E is going to reinstate metavariants having different attribute adjustments, any player who attempts to replicate the fluff in 5E is walking right into a trap.

Remember, "Cyberlimbs have their own Strength and Agility ratings." (pg. 455). Otherwise, the street samurai archetype would not be able to have Strength: 11 on his cyberlimbs when his own natural Strength is only 5.

Of course, this is the same archetype that more than 200,000 over cost, so maybe it's not a definitive example of the RAI.

Jaid has this one right. The rule is seriously buried in the BBB, (it doesn't appear anyplace sensible, and it doesn't show in the index or table of contents) but you cannot augment an attribute past current value + 4. That does reduce the value of trolls, since you can no longer go for an anorexic build and then pump body via augmentations.

We had a large argument over this one. It's definitely questionable, and probably a mistake caused by two people operating under different rulesets. Given the number of editing and playtesting problems in SR5, this doesn't surprise me.

Based on dev commentary on thd other boards, its quite intentional.