[Sipowitz]

Our group is getting ready to do a restart and we decided on going with 300bp characters.
Anyone else ever tried this?

[tzizimine]

Very low powered... almost equivalent to gangers

[Catadmin]

Our group is getting ready to do a restart and we decided on going with 300bp characters.
Anyone else ever tried this?

It's called min-maxing, Bambi. @=)

EDIT: It's going to be interesting trying to get all the necessary skills under that limit, though. I think we should avoid technos and other point sinks.

[snowRaven]

I took part in an online game on over on Dumpshock were characters were made with 40 BPs - SR3 rules, mind you...not sure what the equivalent would be in SR4.

Anyway, that inspired me to do a low-powered game with my players - this was around YotC, so we made them all gangers (I think it was 50-60 BPs worth) that SURGEd the first thing that happened. We played out their change, used the randomized SURGE rules from YotC, and the PCs bended together to form a small changeling gang, recruiting others in their position and fighting other street gangs for scraps and turf. Was a lot of fun.

[Crash_00]

Keep in mind that at 300 build points you can only spend 150 on your attributes. This means that you cannot be an average member of your races (min+2 in each stat) because the points are so low. For that reason, I suggest 320 usually as a minimum.

Two other ways to make characters low powered that I've seen and used are:
A.) Limit Availability (usually see this limited to
B.) Make each BP worth 1,000¥ instead of 5,000¥.

[Wakshaani]

Yeah, 320 is the level that I use. You can find a 320 challenge deep in the files on Dumpshock, and a much larger one on RPG.net's forums. I should port everything over here to help showcase how it works.

[Makki]

I took part in an online game on over on Dumpshock were characters were made with 40 BPs - SR3 rules, mind you...not sure what the equivalent would be in SR4.

Anyway, that inspired me to do a low-powered game with my players - this was around YotC, so we made them all gangers (I think it was 50-60 BPs worth) that SURGEd the first thing that happened. We played out their change, used the randomized SURGE rules from YotC, and the PCs bended together to form a small changeling gang, recruiting others in their position and fighting other street gangs for scraps and turf. Was a lot of fun.

I so wanna do this. But in SR 4.

[Crash_00]

It can be a lot of fun. I've played in a few low-powered campaigns. They key is having a GM that will give appropriate challenges. If you're ganger leveled group was made with 300 BP, corp security and Lone Star can actually be a challenge.

[Medicineman]

Our group is getting ready to do a restart and we decided on going with 300bp characters.
Anyone else ever tried this?

Yes we tried and it was no Fun.    
Chars couldn't do shit because of the low Pool and the GM always had to "tone down" the Enemies or else they would've killed the Chars
(no Automatic Weapons, no Armored Jackets, not even a 3rd IP IIRC 2 IPS were reserved for "the Big Boss")
I suggest a Minimum of 350 BP
If You want to play Lowstyle thats the completely wrong direction.
with only 300 BP the Chars tend to be even more min/Maxed than with 400 BP and lacking fundamental Skills or Attributes (with CHA ,LOG and Edge as a Dumpstat)
If you want to play Lowstyle You'd rather  lower the availiability or the resources (only 2500 or even 1000 ¥ per BP)
and Speak with the Players if they're comfortable with playing......Below average Chars

with a lowdance
Medicineman

[Wakshaani]

320 gives you Rookie Runners, in effect... they could easily be people fresh off the real world that have fallen into the shadows, they could be up-and-comers, but it also allows for grittier people, like your classic razorgirl or a corporate face-type who moonlights in seedier areas to start his Mr Johnson career path.

What I use for 320 is as follows:

320 BP, up to half of which can be spent on attributes (Thus, 160, or a 3 in everything) ... as usual, points spent towards Magic or Edge do not count as attributes.

Up to 40 BP can be spent on resources.

Gear is capped at Rating 4, or Availability 8, whichever is less.

Skills are capped at 4, but you can take one skill at level 5.
Skill Groups are capped at 3,
Contacts are capped at 4 loyalty and/or connection. (Thus, you coudl have a 4/4 contact.)
Adept abilities are capped at 4.

The GM reserves the right to thwap you and deny any cheeseballing. (IE, taking the inability to pilot anthromorphics is unlikely to get you 5 points, chummer.)

From there, you're pretty much good to go. I can post quite a few sample characters if you'd like.

[Sipowitz]

It's called min-maxing, Bambi. @=)

EDIT: It's going to be interesting trying to get all the necessary skills under that limit, though. I think we should avoid technos and other point sinks.

Poo she found me. 

If Ed didn't already say, we are starting in the Czech Republic.


I don't think we are super worried about a potential one stat bump not being there. 

[Catadmin]

It's called min-maxing, Bambi. @=)

EDIT: It's going to be interesting trying to get all the necessary skills under that limit, though. I think we should avoid technos and other point sinks.

Poo she found me. 

If Ed didn't already say, we are starting in the Czech Republic.

Sip - Didn't I hear that we were "fixing" the attribute total up to 175? Or was that a different conversation?

All, thanks for the reminder about the attribute mins. I'd forgotten about that. But the point is that we are going to be rookie runners and have an opportunity to advance based on that.

[snowRaven]

Only viable way to do a Technomancer with 320 BPs would be either 'Latent' or 'Wild Technomancer', for later development.

Anything where you actually want to create a fully functioning Technomancer will either be seriously gimped at everything else, or else be heavily dependent on Threading - all the time.

[Mirikon]

Biggest weakness I see in that group is that you will have little to no magic, period. Spellslingers are the biggest point sink there are. Still, if you want to do a game based around low to mid level gangers trying to hustle their way out of the Barrens, it isn't TOO bad.

[Wakshaani]

Alright, watching the debates right now, but I'll drop a few example 320 people in here. I have magicians, a technomancer, even, heck, a vampire.