[Tecumseh]

I'll share this thread, which gargaM0NK may or may not have seen, because it's relevant to a lot of his inquires and research:

http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=23374.0

Trolls do have a huge opportunity cost, but I don't envy the developers that had to figure out how to balance them. Trolls receive so many attribute points that if you lower their Priority cost then you have players selecting them simply to make a skinny troll that doesn't need any additional points in Body or Strength. This true for orks as well, and dwarves too to a lesser extent. As Glyph said, an ork mage or decker will usually be fine with an ork's base Body of 4 and Strength of 3.

This was an issue in SR4, where orks were mathematically the best option for anyone who didn't want to play a face (in which case you were an elf). Orks cost 20 BP, for which you received 50 BP-worth of Body and Strength, which was all that most characters needed. (Body 4 was more important in SR4 because it was a key threshold to meet to beat armor encumbrance.) It also meant that you could spend your Attributes build points, which were capped at 200 BP, on the other six attributes without worrying about BOD and STR, allowing those six remaining attributes to be higher than they would be for a human character.

The SR5 developers wanted to avoid the same issue. The current priorities are ordered in ranking of most bonus points to attributes: trolls +8, orks +5, dwarves +5, elves +3. This doesn't take into account that some of these racial attribute points (elves' AGI and CHA) are linked to more skills than others (trolls' BOD and STR), nor the frequency with which those skills are rolled.

You then get into complicated game-design questions about whether skinny orks and trolls are realistic, or desirable. I've never seen someone play an elf or human with minimum Body AND Strength values but it happens all the time with orks and trolls because the game mechanics don't discourage it. There are ways to curb it - for example, making some attributes easier or harder to advance - but that complicates a chargen system that can already be overwhelming for new players. And so, with all things, there are trade-offs and balancing and not everyone agrees where the lines should be drawn. Everything has a price, both for the designers and the players.

[firebug]

Wonderful explanation, Tecumseh.  You very clearly explained the reasoning behind and the issues that arise from the Priority cost of metatypes.

In pure numbers, a Dwarf sounds like a serious boost, but an Elf boosts more universal attributes.  BOD and STR aren't the most useful attributes in SR5, (especially STR, BOD has good benefit, but it no longer restricts your maximum Armor, so a good piece of armor can make up for what would have been a crippling weakness in SR4A) while AGI and CHA benefit significantly more skills, and are attributes people more often want to maximize, meaning the increased capacity is a big deal.

As well, BOD and STR are less useful outside of specific archetypes.  STR is almost useless outside of melee, unless you're relying on constant Full Auto on Heavy Weapons.  BOD is useful to all archetypes.  For an Elf, CHA is ignorable for a lot of archetypes (everything but Magician and Face can afford to have it very low), but AGI is useful to almost every archetype (everyone should be able to fire a gun).

It then looks closer to this...
Elf +1 Attribute Points for 1 Priority Points
Ork +3 Attribute Points for 2 Priority Points
Dwarf +3 Attribute Points for 2 Priority Points
Troll +4 Attribute Points for 3 Priority Points

As you can see, it starts to really cost a lot for little benefit in this regard.  Especially when you compare how much those Priority Points would get you if you bought Attributes.  1 Priority Point in Attributes is either +2 Attribute Points of +4, depending on how many you've spent on it.  The 3 Priority Points spent on Troll would get you at least 8 Attribute Points, max 10.  The 2 Priority Points spent on Dwarf or Ork gives at least 4 Attribute Points, but up to 8 if you were already at C Attributes.

As such, if you play an archetype where STR isn't useful (AKA, the majority outside of Close Combat), Ork, Dwarf, and Troll are all mechanically a loss.  Sure, you could decide that making a Dwarf decker use melee makes it not worthless, but that is just the Sunk Cost Fallacy at work.

[Glyph]

To me, "skinny" orks and trolls do make sense in some circumstances.  When you live in a world built for coach potatoes, where your inborn strength is more than ample for opening jars and other slight exertions, there really is not a lot of motivation to improve.  Orks and trolls who are techies or mages, I can see having the minimum Body and Strength for their metatype.  The more typical orks and trolls, who grow up in poorer neighborhoods and among their own metatype, will be a lot more motivated to improve themselves physically - and will tend towards more typical roles such as gangers and street samurai.

[gargaM0NK]

I'll share this thread, which gargaM0NK may or may not have seen, because it's relevant to a lot of his inquires and research:

http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=23374.0

Thanks! I hadn't seen that and it looks fascinating.

Whereas my previous work was in fact oriented around finding the best "whatever", right now I was playing around with the idea of getting a good spread of metatypes in some sample archetypes.  I'll try to update the original post to reflect my findings, but once we got past the obligatory "just pick anything", this thread has had some really good responses.

I appreciate it you guys!

[gargaM0NK]

In pure numbers, a Dwarf sounds like a serious boost, but an Elf boosts more universal attributes.  BOD and STR aren't the most useful attributes in SR5, (especially STR, BOD has good benefit, but it no longer restricts your maximum Armor, so a good piece of armor can make up for what would have been a crippling weakness in SR4A) while AGI and CHA benefit significantly more skills, and are attributes people more often want to maximize, meaning the increased capacity is a big deal.

As well, BOD and STR are less useful outside of specific archetypes.  STR is almost useless outside of melee, unless you're relying on constant Full Auto on Heavy Weapons. 

Would you agree that the Str is somewhat useful in the fact that it's the most efficient way to increase your Physical LImit, which Sneaking / Weapons / Dodge all rely on?

[firebug]

Weapons don't use Physical Limit; even melee weapons don't, unless they're a variation of your Unarmed skill (in which case, you're a close combat character).  Dodging doesn't rely on Physical Limit either, unless you mean specifically the "Parry/Block/Dodge" actions that only give a bonus to defense against melee attacks.  The Full Defense "action" that adds to all defense tests doesn't bring your Limit into the equation.

Stealth (Sneaking, specifically) actually has more efficient ways to improve the Limit, like the Practice, Practice, Practice quality for a whopping 2 Karma in Hard Targets, or using a Chameleon Suit. With both of those, you have a Limit of 6 at least, even if you have 1 STR.  Those are much, much cheaper than spending points or karma to improve your STR attribute.

Maybe using Palming to hide your gear, but that's usually sufficient with a lower Limit combined with a number of penalties to the observer's (often unimpressive) dice pool.  Even a character dedicated to smuggling a shotgun in their suit might be better off spending 8 Karma on the Indomitable quality, as even bringing STR from 1 to 2 is more expensive in pure karma costs.  There's theoretically times where a very specific build might be forced to raise STR for Physical Limit, but this is so tiny of a percentage it's not really any proof.

The attribute is sadly not worth very much.

They made is important to Physical Limit!  And then made Physical Limit the most common Limit to be overridden by a gear limit...

They made is important for Recoil!  And then made recoil irrelevant unless you spend multiple Complex Actions firing instead of using the Simple Action versions...

They made it affect how much "bonus armor" you can wear!  And then made base armor stat-independent and armor bonuses very limited...  You can have 1 STR and 16 Armor if you want.  Or 14 using just the core book.

At least melee damage is good in 5th Edition.  An unaugmented Troll with a combat knife can do as much damage as a shotgun.  An unaugmented Ork can reach similar levels with a sword.  Melee isn't quite the underpowered "style but no substance" niche it was in the previous edition.  The change to movement works well too, even if older players claim it's BS that character "teleport" around the battlefield.

Edit:  Ah, but you know what?  There is one big thing that Physical Limit affects.  It hasn't come up much in my games, somehow, but it could definitely screw someone.  Your Physical Limit is the number of Condition Boxes you need to take from one attack to be knocked prone.  Again, a less combat-focused build could ignore this.  You'd need to have the perfect failure of being the most obvious target, with the worst defense, behind no cover, with no one to distract the enemy, but getting knocked down too easily definitely could just screw someone.