[SpellBinder]

...
It gets even funnier if you're like an 8 foot tall troll changeling with large tusks, an elephant trunk, four arms, quad wielding chainsaws, with a vestigial tail, third eye Satyr elgs and scent glands, covered in the blood of the innocent..

And he has absolutly no chance RAW to really roll an intimidate check to the point that even Scoobydoo isn't afraid of him. Seriously, you're taking a =7~8 to intimidate checks with a changeling like that. and have -2 to your limit. You don't stand a snowballs chance in hell with ever making a social roll.

...

Personally I'd probably swap those penalties for bonuses when it comes to Intimidation when you're trying to be physically intimidating and look like that.  Extra freaky looking shouldn't equate to less scary.

And by the way, did you happen to roll up that monstrosity of a troll?

[Triskavanski]

Nah, elephantman would be much closer to a changeling 3 so this poor sap had to pay 30 karma just to be absolutely terrible at all social rolls

[Triskavanski]

And more reasons why the implementation is terrible...

The Freaks goes both ways...

If im not mistaken dont you resist social rolls with social rolls?

Like to not get conned, you gotta roll your own social test against it. So, changelings, especially surge three are easily defeated in anything social. Because people are all prejudice against changelings and know when they are talking to one, even when they cant see them.

[Medicineman]

what about Nartaki ?
 are they considered Metavariants in SR5 or Surge Freaks ?
(and if they're considered Surgefreaks is this true in India, in Indian communities in the CAS/UCAS/ADL ? )

with a Bollywood Dance
Medicineman

[Triskavanski]

Actually, even the elephant guy would look like one of the gods as well, genesha. But hed be absolutely dismal. The main problem is that freaks just blanket applies to everything, i assume because one quality is so powerful

[Medicineman]

Actually, even the elephant guy would look like one of the gods as well, genesha. But hed be absolutely dismal.

( Ganesha  or Shri Ganesha  , btw )
not for Hindus . For them he should gain social Bonus die and a raise of social Limits .
Nartaki too.
Its like You have a surged Angel (complete with Wings, a Halo ,etc.) He should gain the same Bonuses with christian People (especially religious ones)

with a philosophical Dance
Medicineman

[Triskavanski]

Totally. I mean people already do a lot of that already too in real life with the so called "freaks" 

The Freaks blip should have been expanded a lot more where you could get positive and negitive modifiers based on who you are talking too and what kinds of mutations you have. Something that is totally more universal for gms to determine what they would have.

[Triskavanski]

So I've tried to make a cat man in a karma point buy.

Took Surge III

Took Animal Pelage Camo Fur. - Cause well, I'd want to play a catman who's kinda stealthy like a panther or something. This is a tricky worded bit of text.. Cauese liberally, I get a +1 die to sneak tests in low light situations, or I get it when I'm in whatever my pattern matches up to. Restircted.. I only get the that +1 sneak  when I'm in a situation where my pattern matches up and I'm in low light levels. But now I cannot take Unusual hair, mood hair, scales, feathers, striking skin pigmentation or anything else that modifies my hair/skin.

Retractable Claws - I'm a catman. Of course I'm gonna have claws.

Balance tail - +1 to balance checks for 6 karma. Yay. Oh and now I take a -1 penalty to all social skills. Oh and if I sit on my tail, thats another -1 to all my actions.

Cat Eyes  - Yay Low light vision for 2 karma! Wow thats just like the quality that also costs two karma in the front of the book. Wait its another freak quality? So thats another -1 to all social interactions. At least the other one could compensate his negative by wearing sunglasses. :/

Satyr legs. - They don't have to end in hooves. And frankly I totally like digigrade better.. They'd let me run and sprint a little more.. Oh, but again another freak quality. -1 to all social actions.. and since this is my third one -1 to my limit.


Well.. onward to negitive qualities. Dang I sure took a lot of positive qualities.. and so many negatives are no longer usable because of those positive qualities.

But like.. what do i take? Maybe Nocturnal, Sure. I could do that.. I just have -1 to mental stats during the day. I guess there is also slow healer? Then uh.. hmm. Well I guess I could take the Neoteny quality. Which adds another level of freak on me.. and increases my stuff 10%. more nuyen. Ugh.. I still have to make up 14~15 karma. Because spending 30 karma, taking -4 to all social tests, -1 to social limit  spending 10% more nuyen for life style, -2 to all healing tests, +1 on getting remembered, -1 to all mental stats, allowing to GM to alter my social tests whenever he'd want to, -1 to all actions I do while sitting (as likely, I'll always be sitting on my tail if I do sit) for +1 to balance checks +1 to stealth checks when specific conditions are met,  +1 DV -1 AP natural weapon, and a bit more run/spring speed and +2 dv for kicks... Isn't yet enough balance.


Catman Version II

Celerity, Functional Tail

Neotenty, Slow Healer, Unusual Hair: fur

Spend 30 karma, Lose 2 physical hit boxes. -2 on heal checks. +1 to find me. -2 to all social checks, -1 to all actions while siting

to get
+3x walk speed, 6x run speed, +1 sprint,  +1 to balance checks.


Yeah... :/

[Triskavanski]

Working with the rules, I'm trying to develop them into something that isn't so absolutely crushing for a changeling to be able to do any sort of social tests, and so that a changeling player doesn't have to start off as a prime runner to be able to actually make his character the way they wanted too.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UYX_lJBlUJWBcWgKKh1h_0lkOd3oUaIm6qEpguD3Q5Q/edit?usp=sharing


The way I figure it, Class I Class II and Class III are less about the points spent, and more about the overall departure from their normal metatype. The closer they are to being a whole new race, the higher their surge is.

Since everyone is flipping on about metagenic improvement being too OP, I removed it and replaced with exceptional attribute instead, as thats the whole argument for "balance" of having to spend karma just to have the option of being a changeling.

A lot of the qualities are going to have their karma costs reduced. I mean seriously, why does functional tail cost 6 karma, and really only give me a +1 to gymnastics when I could take natural Athlete and have +2 to gymnastics and +2 to running without the -1 to social tests and =1 to actions while sitting for just one karma more?

[Syntetesh]

The best rework I could think would be to have true positive and true negative qualities that don't mix up bonus and malus.

Remove the malus to social test/limit because their already exist in the social modifier table (Prejudiced -2 ;  SR5 CRB p. 140)

Remove Unusual hair and Striking skin pigmentation, make Surge an unique quality coasting 16 karma and the class is determined by the karma value of metagenic traits taken.

The surge class determine how weird is the character making him more easily identifiable.

Due to the uniqueness and ease of identifying these features on changelings, all Matrix Search Tests and tests to identify or locate a changeling through matrix or legwork get a dice pool modifier equal to his Surge class. Furthermore they get +1 Notoriety for being easily noticeable.

For the metagenic traits make a simple formula : Cost = Somme ( [Frequency] × [Bonus/malus level] )

[Frequency] :
2 : Always
1 : Situational
0.5 : Very Situational

[Bonus] :
4 : 1 or 2 -/+1 dice pool modifier ; Minor effect (low light vision, underwater vision)
8 : 3-6  -/+ 1 dice pool modifier ; 1-2  -/+ 1 limit modifier ; Moderate effect (celerity ; underwater breathing)
16 : -/+ 1 Limit modifier ; Major effect (metagenic attribute)

Edit :
This is based on what I used for the natural venom houserule

[Triskavanski]

The problems I see with that..

1) You're knocking street level right out of there for having 16 karma cost on the character right from the start. 16 karma that as far as I can see, does not actually do anything other than serve as a character tax, which begins leading us again into the hype"balancing" that is in the current version of 5e Changeling.

2) The formula is anything but simple or really even all that balanced. Something like Claws would cost something like 8 or 16 points because it would be something that would always be there. Especially retractable claws.

3) Surge Classes don't really work that way to be honest. Often they are actually most "unique" around Class II. Class III the changes to the character are so extensive that they are more of a new metatype that for whatever reason line up more with each other. Thats why Surge III you start getting beast men races like Cat-people or Dog-People. Or Lizardmen.

It kinda starts to get to the point of really being no more different than searching for windigos or vampires.


4) the social negitive stuff, Prejudiced is something else entirely.

5) Bonus/Negative effects in qualities is an okay thing to have. It actually is kinda expected to have with somethings. But the problem comes is that having that negative should be reflected in the karma cost of the quality. For example if we compare Deformity (Quasimodo)   with Progeria both do very similar things. Both give a -2 to all physical tests.

Quasimodo however has double freak penalties. and has six more karma, while Progeria may or may not have freak quality, it at least has some sort of social aspect, similar to Neoteny.

Now depending, that Quasimodo could double all your freak penalties, or it counts as two freak qualities. Assuming its the latter, That would mean having freak would be a total of 3 points of negative karma effect. This is further reflected in Third eye.

So..yeah. It makes the Functional Tail (Balance) even more too expensive as it technically costs 9+ karma due to the reduction not coming in.  Even more so when another quality, balance receptor, gives the exact same bonuses for the same cost, without the additional negitives

[Syntetesh]

1) Surge works like quality but do not count toward your pos/neg quality maxima, dunno how many karma you get in street lvl but I think you can take it with some negative quality

2) Claws are always here but you only use them for combat so it's situational and end with 4 karma for normal claw and 8 for retractable one. The always is more for metagenic attributes and the like.

3) Yes but even class I changeling have some strange feather and that way, you can delete unusual hair and striking skin pigmentation. (Even your character can have it fluffwise)

4) I didn't tell to remove freaks, but applying it to tails or other funny thing is dumb imo however it work well for Cephalopod skull

5) Yes but some positive qualities give more malus than bonus and vice-versa, so with the formula you substract the malus "cost" to the quality cost and keep track.

[Triskavanski]

1) Even if it doesn't count towards your pos/negitve, its still 16 points of karma for... what? What is the direct effect that spending the 16 karma gives? Cause right now, it doesn't give you anything, It simply taxes you, and the tax is too high!

 There are two other qualities out there in this book I've seen that do tax you as well, but the tax is so you can break particular rules. Born Rich/Restricted Gear. They have certain things that they do however..
1a) the two qualities allow you to break rules. For born rich you can spend more karma for money, for Restricted Gear you can get things well beyond your availability. Restricted gear is also capable of allowing you to get just about anything you'd want, easily.
1b) They're fairly low on the karma costs. Once you start getting past 10, you're really making people dedicate a lot to that particular thing, really bad for a tax quality.
1c) Neither of them have any sort of additional negatives to "balance them out"



2) Spending 4-8 karma on a relatively minor effect is too expensive, at least imo.

3) A Class 1 changeling might or might not. They might be like the cat girl in the isle of Dr Monroe, where their nails are just a little sharper, and their fangs a little more pronounced, Or they might look a little bit like Quasimodo. I look at it a bit more like the X-men, You've got guys like Gambit with his special eyes who would be kinda a changeling class one. Then Mystique with her striking skin pigmentation, extravagant eyes, and strange skin texture who would be class II. Then you have characters like Night Crawler or Cat Beast who are so far changed the don't seem to be human anymore who would be class III. Though in shadowrun there is certainly a lot more cat people than in xmen.

5) I agree that there is a lot of positive mutagen qualities that give more negative effects than positive, but I don't believe that the formula will fix that. Rather it would just kinda make a lot more things more expensive that shouldn't be anywhere as expensive as it should be. a +1 on diving tests isn't the same as +1 on perception tests, or even perception tests in dim light. Somethings are more useful than others.

[Syntetesh]

1) Hum, I guess you are right but if we make Surge a free/cheap quality I think we have to use some sort of drawback like 3)

2) Think more of 2-4, the always frequency don't come often in my mind (metagenic attribute, condition monitor)

3) What you are describing is perfectly in line with the +1/2/3 bonus to identify / locate / matrix search that I propose and remember it also come with the removal of freak effect on quality such tails, cat eyed etc

4) Diving test are very situational imo so you end with +1 diving for 2 karma. Keen eared coasting 3 karma will end up coasting 2 karma too but it will coast 4 karma for +1 dice pool modifier for all perception. Unless your perception skill is under lvl 2, it's cheap.

Edit :
The main objective of this formula is to give GM and players a simple basis for creating balanced new metagenic qualities. The number I choose may not be right but what do you think about the whole concept?

I am not optimizing my character, most of the time it's the opposite, making a blood-mage pixie (max strength reduced from 5 to 2) with a game mechanic involving body+strength for the dice pool...
(Yes, she died... but she prevented the death of all the group doing so)

But with SR changeling, I feel like I am killing myself during the character creation not making him a bit harder to play but fun. Not mentioning the lack of qualities that fit my cnidarian changeling concept.

[Triskavanski]

There is a difference between harder because of concept of character, and harder because to play the character you've got to spend a crap load of karma, Have very significant drawbacks and have very little advantages. I'm not much on the power gaming myself either, but I'd actually like to play a cat man or goat person or something while still being able to actually perform social tests.


3) It does seem that way, until you realize that Cat-beast isn't the only cat-man changeling. In the books they'd already described two lizard-men, one was a contact, the other was used in their changeling thing.

4) Perceptive is a 5 point quality that gives +1 to perc, or 10 for +2.