Shadowrun Play > Previous Editions
Question about Karma Build System in SR4A
Glyph:
I haven't really had that experience. I fiddle around with character creations a lot, and most of my optimized ones come out worth more than 400 BP. And that includes paying for the knowledge skills that I would normally get for free under BP. Generally, a min-maxed karmagen character will work out to be the equivalent of 450 BP, give or take, while a non min-maxed karmagen character will work out to be quite a bit higher than that.
Karmagen doesn't so much punish min-maxing, as reward generalization (because low skills and Attributes cost a lot less). Well, kind of rewards it. Dice pools are still one of the main gauges of character effectiveness, so characters that are spread out a lot are still disadvantaged, even if their character can have a lot more of these low-rated skills than they would in BP.
Triggvi:
Having some low level skills help round out the character. Bp characters have very few skills often have major holes in them.
Glyph:
I'm not saying low level skills aren't good. I take skills for my specialty higher, but still pick up some other skills to round out the character. Lopsided BP characters happen when players concentrate on being the best at a narrow role, at the expense of being pretty weak and useless outside of that one area. Karmagen discourages hyper-specialization with a bit of a carrot and stick approach (exponential cost increases for higher stats, but more overall points to play with). But BP does similar things (higher cost to hard-max a skill, limits on points that can be spent on Attributes or how many high-rated skills you can have), with mixed effectiveness.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page
Go to full version