[Sichr]

1) I consider bold to be equivalent of people yellin so their opinion is taken serriously.

2) I also thing that people need to yell when they are talking too much  saying nothing (www equivalent = TLDR)

I hate when people yell at me.

Also...it is lovely how attempt to make this conversation based on facts (NPCs and Grunts comparation) turns out to be conversation based on ustable land of individual opinions. Everyone has one, but when talking about numbers, opinions are meaningless...IMO

[PeterSmith]

1) I consider bold to be equivalent of people yellin so their opinion is taken serriously.

Same here. The nice thing about this forum? Ignore List. I've thrown people on my list in the past for overuse of text changes (bold, italics, underline).

[Xzylvador]

I consider hijacking and derailing a thread, then turning it into a public yet private two-way conversation to be pretty impolite.
_Pax_, while I share your view on a lot of points you make, you're leaning a bit too close to making SR a class-based system for my liking. Also, you ever notice how often you use the term 'straw man' in your posts? :p
A4BG: You kind of started derailing this thread with your "This example character of mine is not overpowered." post, while the thread never was about being OP or not, but about whether not not 1000 karma characters are on the same level as the ones made with the "previous" rules.
And you went out of your way to build a character that doesn't beat 400BP characters in dicepools. But let's be honest here. You built a character with Close Combat Skill Group maxed, Firearm Skill Group maxed, Influence Skill Group maxed, Stealth Skill Group maxed, 3 points in Athletics Skill Group and 2 in Electronics Skill Group, another 2 in Hacking... That's already more than half the BP's the BP-built char gets, and we haven't even touched seperate skills or specs yet.
You softmax 3 attributes. Also spend a total of 240BP's on Primary attributes, a BP-character isn't even allowed to do that by the rules.
So karmabuild's already got more than the BPbuild could legally get, and we haven't even started buying gear or contacts yet.
Again, this thread isn't about being OP, it's about balance.
I'm not going to tell you how to run your games, but if you're seriously letting players at your table choose between 400BP or 1000 karma, do you at least inform them of the imbalance between the two?
Because, while you can certainly make it so the karmabuild doesn't get much higher dicepools, you can't honestly claim that if you put two uninformed players next to eachother, one a 400BP "generalist build" and the other with the build you posted, when the BP-guy looks at the others sheet he won't see that the other guys can do a lot more things just as good or better, has a better body/mind and has more and better toys to play with, he won't think this is kind of unfair.

[Falconer]

For the record... this supposedly balanced with 400BP... 1000karma character.

Comes to 610 BP for attributes, skills, and contacts alone.   I stopped at the negative qualities and equipment (didn't feel like tabulating up all the kit but I see 100k in vehicles alone... so figure that and other equipment/cyber more than roughly offsets -25 or -35BP worth of negative qualities).  But skills alone were 311 BP.

Yeah All4... so let me also hop on the bandwagon of yeah right...   your jack of all trades is more of a master of all trades.  Just because you didn't optomize for any single die pool doesn't mean the character isn't OP compared to other 400BP chars.



Also for the record, I also like to make well balanced characters with varied skillsets... but for me that tends to mean I like to get 1 rank into the influence group just so I'm not defaulting... or similar.  I hate how the future karma costs often deter me from buying a rank 1 skill group or skill simply because it's so damn cheap to buy learn it later, yet so expensive in play to raise an already high skill.   So the temptation in chargen is do I spend 10BP now to raise influence from 3->4  and save myself 20karma later or do I buy a flavour skill group/skill at rank 1 and make myself make up 10 extra karma later to raise the other group (or break it and raise things individually).

I dislike how much SR4 has de-emphasized skills compared to prior editions and instead placed the emphasis on buying up attributes instead.   (SR3 who scared you more... the street sam with ~4 passes... with 9 dice in his skill and ~8 combat pool... or the one with 4 dice in his skill and ~12 combat pool.  Yeah thought so... attributes only went towards the pool and had to be spent and burned over the course of combat turns, while skill was always there).   I still overall prefer SR4's system, just I wish they had scaled skills and attributes better.  (and done away with BP altogether... having two seperate systems one to build characters and a different one to advance them always leads to a disparity in costs where long term it's always best to min-max your buys in chargen to limit costs later).  Currently the edge is towards attributes where 9 or 12 dice will come from there maxed out while only 6 from your skill itself.  (and attribute raises help multiple skills and skill groups...).



Slightly OT.   My only issue with the whole karmagen system is they broke it unnecessarily to kowtow to people who wanted to play trolls with extremely high str and bod.  So rather than treating the metatype as similar to a cyber/bio enhancement and adding it AFTER buying attributes (like a normal human).   They instead jacked up the amount of karma that these special snowflakes could spend on attributes, without putting any requirement that those points actually be spent on jacked up attributes.  So if you take the 'package deal' then ignore the 'strengths' and play instead to the 'weaknesses' you end up with things which pretty much say... never play a human if you don't want to get screwed on points.  (metas also benefit from the humans low costs to raise low attributes!)

Translation a troll street shaman who dump stats bod & str has far more karma to work with than an equivalent human in making a shaman/mage for example.   Even paying for the meta doesn't make up for this disparity... (look at say an orc... 25karma for free for str, another 45karma free for body... for a mere 20karma to buy the race...  what's the penalty a -1 cap limit on cha and log... no more... no extra costs to raise cha and log...  so effectively it's a human with a head start... toss on human looking, and make a backstory where he is born human and goblinizes so no lifespan penalty...  and we have an ideal powergamed point machine who has enough excess karma available for points to eek out MORE edge and magic than a basic human even after paying 30karma extra for human looking and ork and the humans freebie 10karma +1edg).  None of that is opinion, it's strictly by the powergaming numbers.

[Ancient History]

Slightly OT.   My only issue with the whole karmagen system is they broke it unnecessarily to kowtow to people who wanted to play trolls with extremely high str and bod.  So rather than treating the metatype as similar to a cyber/bio enhancement and adding it AFTER buying attributes (like a normal human).   They instead jacked up the amount of karma that these special snowflakes could spend on attributes, without putting any requirement that those points actually be spent on jacked up attributes.  So if you take the 'package deal' then ignore the 'strengths' and play instead to the 'weaknesses' you end up with things which pretty much say... never play a human if you don't want to get screwed on points.  (metas also benefit from the humans low costs to raise low attributes!)

Unless there have been significant changes beyond boosting it up to 1000 Karma for some reasons, there is no "they" there is only "me." So perhaps I should explain.

The were a couple outright design goals with KarmaGen, one of which was that the limitations on maximum attributes should be roughly in line with the maximum under standard BPGen. Because BP advancement takes a linear scale to costs and Karma takes a geometric scale to costs, there were some inherent balance point issues - basically, lower skills and attributes were comparatively cheaper in KarmaGen, and higher attributes and skills were comparatively more expensive. Two basic methods were considered, forcing everyone to buy from 1 to 6 and then add the attribute modifiers on, or to force everyone to buy from minimum to maximum. I chose the latter, for reasons I don't entirely recall because I no longer have that spreadsheet, but I believe I was concerned with difficulties of balancing "free" points versus metatype cost (I was at this point trying to minimize or eliminate metatype costs, which caused a lot of people to have a hissy cow, and after listening to them I agreed I'd made a mistake and added it back in to the errata.) However, this meant that, say, Trolls would need much more Karma to max out Strength or Body than a human character to max out any attribute, so the adjustment was made on how much they could spend total on attributes.

From a balance standpoint, this is an iffy decision. Attributes in SR are generally more valuable than skills, because a single attribute had many linked skills and skills are easier to raise. So ignoring any social detriments that GMs might land on players and relatively minor bonuses like thermographic vision, metahumans who chose not to max out an attribute have much more to spend on their attributes, including special attributes, than human characters. It's not that the human spends considerably more than the ork or troll to get the same attributes, but a human who chooses to max out Magic or Resonance (or any attribute) is going to have less points overall to spend on remaining attributes than a comparable metahuman character. Metatypes, then, have a greater amount of choice when it comes to picking their attributes.

On the other paw, metahuman characters that choose to spend all they can on attributes will then have less to spend in other areas. On the whole, a human character should have a greater range of skills than most metahuman charaters, or at least spend more karma on skills on average. This is a simple result of having the same (well, slightly more with the introduction of metatype costs) amount of Karma available as metahumans, but not being able to spend as big a chunk on attributes. At the outliers, if a troll and a human both spend all of the Karma they can on attributes, the human will have more Karma left over - and lacking much else to spend it on, will have more skills and possibly gear. So by imposing the sliding-scale metatype-attrbute-spending limit, I was able to adjust for differing costs and possibly balance certain buying behaviors over the population in general. A flat "you can spend this much Karma on attributes" like in BPGen would, on the other hand, have put the screws on metahumans (at least trolls) while allowing humans to soft-max far too many attributes...as I think someone pointed out is the case now with 1,000 Karma.

So, that's one of the criteria I applied in the design process and why I came up with that particular solution. It's not perfect, but that way at least you can get an idea of where I was coming from when I was working this system out.

[Falconer]

Ancient... I don't want to reopen an old debate.  You impressed me greatly because unlike many you did argue your reasons back then.  We might not have agreed with them, but you earned a lot of respect for explaining how you came to them.  All this is speaking purely mechanically and without regards to RP concerns.  (if everything is based on RP... why bother with points at all?).


I see your logic on the last part... humans would have more to spend on skills.   However, that's only because they would be forced to spend them on skills instead of on more effective things (attributes).   The problem is thus... in SR4... you normally pull half to twice as many dice from attributes as you do from skills in your emphasis.  Not only that an attribute costs the same as a skill group... but an attribute contributes dice to more tests than even a skill group does.  Also there is no such thing as a 'skill only test' while there are 'attribute only' tests.  So all you did was force humans to spend points less effectively than metas because when going by the numbers attributes are almost always a better investment than skills.   Metas are already better than humans from a pure mechanical standpoint just because of they can play to their attribute/special ability strengths.


The problem isn't in the chargen system so much as it is in the karma costs themselves.   Some things like technomancers just don't translate well.  Probably because CF costs are a little too high.   Similarly, skills are great... but if you're looking at 20karma to raise an attribute or ~20karma to raise a single skill by 2 ranks (3->5, 4->6)... normally the attribute is the better buy.   Similarly, I can't recall the last time I ever saw a troll actually buy his already elevated body stat up instead of shoring up other areas like skills or weak attributes simply because the karma cost is so steep comparatively for a troll to go from average -> above average compared to a human going from average -> above average.   I think that's a better explanation of one of my frustrations with the SR4 system.

[_Pax_]

Slightly OT.   My only issue with the whole karmagen system is they broke it unnecessarily to kowtow to people who wanted to play trolls with extremely high str and bod.  So rather than treating the metatype as similar to a cyber/bio enhancement and adding it AFTER buying attributes (like a normal human).   They instead jacked up the amount of karma that these special snowflakes could spend on attributes, without putting any requirement that those points actually be spent on jacked up attributes.  So if you take the 'package deal' then ignore the 'strengths' and play instead to the 'weaknesses' you end up with things which pretty much say... never play a human if you don't want to get screwed on points.  (metas also benefit from the humans low costs to raise low attributes!)

Unless there have been significant changes beyond boosting it up to 1000 Karma for some reasons, there is no "they" there is only "me." So perhaps I should explain.

.... except, of course, that HeroLab has followed the very unofficial "errata", and set the default at 1,000 Karma, and the attribute cap at 62.5%.  Which means, your words have gone beyond merely you, and been put into one of the more popular character generators available for Shadowrun.

The were a couple outright design goals with KarmaGen, one of which was that the limitations on maximum attributes should be roughly in line with the maximum under standard BPGen.

  Then the design fails to achieve that goal, and not by a small margin. 

  Real examples:  Human with four 4's, four 3's.  Costs 200BP.  Costs only 280 Karma.  50% of your BP, or 28%of your Karma. Would be 37.334% at 750 Karma.

  More extreme stats?  Human with one 6s, two 5's,  and five 2's: 195 BP, or 290 Karma.  49% of your BP, or 29% of your Karma. Would be 38.667% at 750 Karma.

  Metahuman?  Troll with strength/Body 8, Agility/Reaction 4, all else 3's.  245BP (45/race, 200/attributes), or 400 Karma.  61% of your BP, or 40% of your Karma.  Would be 53.334% at 750 Karma.

  Or same troll, with Body 10, Strength 9, plus three 3's and three 2's: 240BP (45/race, 200/attribute), or 455 karma.  60% of your BP, or 45.5% of your Karma. Would be 60.667% at 750 Karma.

  ...

  Clearly, KarmaGen isn't working, if it's goals were to produce the same limitations on attributes that BPgen does.  And your change in the default total only exacerbates the problem.  Each and every example above - and I am willing to bet real money, any example you can come up with that starts out BP-legal, either - is going to show that not only does Karmagen universally result in a smaller portion of character resources being spent on the same exact statistics ... but that increasing the starting karma to 1,000 only makes that gap wider.  It is never necessary.

  I suspect someone will come back with "oh but Edge and Magic count in KarmaGen, too".  Well, bollocks to that, I say!  First, they shouldn't be part of that limit, because that'd mean you were comparing not just apples and oranges when suggesting KarmaGen aims for the same attribute limitations as BPgen, but that you were in fact comparing apples and orangutans.  But, second, that simply doesn't matter anyway.  Nor does it matter whether or not anyone wants to have lots of edge, nor whether people do or do not favor Awakened characters.

  What matters is that, what costs you 200BP where the basic 8 attributes are concerned does not even cost you 300 Karma, let alone over 600.  And that's using the x5 multiplier, in every case.  So your increase from 750 to 1000 is not needed.  Not in the slightest, tiniest bit.

  You want a proper design?

  750 Karma, no more than one-third on the basic 8 attributes.  Metatypes cost 2xBP in Karma.  Buy your attributes from 1 to maximum (which is 6, minus any metatype penalties).  Then add metatype bonusses.  Gain free Knowledge/Language skill ranks by the same formula as with BPgen.  Buy skills, gear, contacts, etc as the current system - including Edge and Magic.  Playtest with a half-dozen or so powergamers, adjust specifics accordingly (primarily the initial amount, and the limit on attributes).

  Voila.  None of this "different for the sake of being different" nonsense.  Any flaws in one system, are also flaws in the other.

  And none of these "demigod of all" 1000-karma monstrousities being passed off as "balanced to 400BPgen characters", either.

[Falconer]

Pax
Ancient's been retired from writing and developing for SR for a while now.  Even his web page with tons of useful fluff history and SR knowledge has been down for a while.  "ancientfiles.dumpshock".

I sincerely doubt he had any input whatsoever to JMHardy.   I believe that JMHardy simply popped out a calculator... said ohh 3x attributes at 750 is the same as 5x at 1000 roughly speaking and it went over with no playtesting,  No anything... simply a go with this gut call.

The threads topic is 1000karma in chargen where did it come from.  I believe it came from Mr Hardy... no where else.

Secondary topics are of course is 1000 even appropriate.  I don't think so, you don't think so.   The easiest way to point this out to people is to take what they think is their best 400BP build... and convert it to karma costs instead.  They should find that 750 is almost always perfectly adequate to those tasks with points leftover.  (it is possible... IIRC to make some builds which cost more than 750... but only by going out of your way to buy tons of knowledge/language/CF's with BP then converting to karma.   I leave this as an exercise to others... dumpstat everything but logic & intuition, buy free knowledges/languages... then use all the remaining points to buy knowledges/languages   every 4BP spent on a knowledge converts to 11karma).

[Ancient History]

.... except, of course, that HeroLab has followed the very unofficial "errata", and set the default at 1,000 Karma, and the attribute cap at 62.5%.  Which means, your words have gone beyond merely you, and been put into one of the more popular character generators available for Shadowrun.

Nooo. My errata was extremely brief and did not change the number of points at all, and was only used by the German crew while I was writing for the game. I had naught to do with it beyond that.

  You want a proper design?

  750 Karma, no more than one-third on the basic 8 attributes.  Metatypes cost 2xBP in Karma.  Buy your attributes from 1 to maximum (which is 6, minus any metatype penalties).  Then add metatype bonusses.  Gain free Knowledge/Language skill ranks by the same formula as with BPgen.  Buy skills, gear, contacts, etc as the current system - including Edge and Magic.  Playtest with a half-dozen or so powergamers, adjust specifics accordingly (primarily the initial amount, and the limit on attributes).

  Voila.  None of this "different for the sake of being different" nonsense.  Any flaws in one system, are also flaws in the other.

Well, you're not right. KarmaGen uses a different scales than BPGen, and that's going to affect any attempt at a straight translation, because you're going to get to a point where it costs less than 2xBP Karma to improve some things and more than 2xBP Karma to improve others. That's plain ol' math, never mind game design.

I'm not a rule guru. I've made more than my fair share of mistakes in RC to amply illustrate that fact. But I know that there's a difference between spending 30 Karma to go from attribute 5 to attribute 6 and 10 BP to do the same.

[_Pax_]

I sincerely doubt he had any input whatsoever to JMHardy.

  My (very very) bad, and my apologies to Ancient for my misunderstanding.

They should find that 750 is almost always perfectly adequate to those tasks with points leftover.

  Yeah.  Remember that Fire-specialised Mystic Adept I mentioned on the other forums?  She comes out to only 647 Karma.

.... except, of course, that HeroLab has followed the very unofficial "errata", and set the default at 1,000 Karma, and the attribute cap at 62.5%.  Which means, your words have gone beyond merely you, and been put into one of the more popular character generators available for Shadowrun.

Nooo. My errata was extremely brief and did not change the number of points at all, and was only used by the German crew while I was writing for the game. I had naught to do with it beyond that.

  Like my response to Falconer: my sincerest apologies for confusing you with JMH.