[Nautilust]

As the title says i'm wondering what the pros and cons are between Build Point and Karma Generation.
This would be in 4th edition rules.

[Cabral]

The primary difference is that build point's flat costs are more favorable to building specialists while the karma system is more favorable to building generalists or characters with multiple low ranking skills ("rounding out a concept"). You can max out attributes and skills with build points and it hurts you less than with karma. In karma, you might have strong ratings, but you are less likely to max anything out.

You can also argue that it is good to building a character the same way you will advance it.

[Marcus]

What do you mean when you Say build points?

[Nautilust]

In 4th edition the standard mode of character creation uses BP or Build Points to create characters. So the standard mode of character creation.

Karma uses Karma to build characters and wasn't introduced till the Runner's Companion.

[Mirikon]

As the title says i'm wondering what the pros and cons are between Build Point and Karma Generation.
This would be in 4th edition rules.

Point buy allows for greater specialization, allowing for your runner to be good at one role, a decent backup for another, and possibly being able to do a third in an "oh shit" situation.

Karma gen's only good point is that it uses the same archaic progression that advancement in game does, which essentially means that your character at chargen is as good as they will ever be. Other than that, if you like weak characters that can barely do a bunch of things poorly, then I guess karmagen is right for you.

Honestly, I'm hoping someone just takes the white elephant that is the advancement rules and shoots them, with a Thor shot.

[Marcus]

Honestly, I'm hoping someone just takes the white elephant that is the advancement rules and shoots them, with a Thor shot.

I hear you, but how do you really feel Mirikon?

[Nautilust]

I see where the problem comes in, I think it's mainly poorly recommended starting totals though? Wouldn't Karmagen at higher totals allow for well-rounded, well-balanced characters that aren't min-maxed to be the best at *insert role here* and decent at *insert role here*.

[Mirikon]

Honestly, I'm hoping someone just takes the white elephant that is the advancement rules and shoots them, with a Thor shot.

I hear you, but how do you really feel Mirikon?

Well, I would also salt the earth when the dust from the Thor shot settled, for starters.

And Nautilust, the problem with Karmagen is the way the advancement rules work. It is a structural issue. Increasing the base points is like patching the dam with duct tape.

[Nautilust]

I've never had a problem with the advancement rules myself but I've never been in a long-term game.

[Marcus]

In my opinion the difference between them is just a question of cost scaling. BP and Karma both allow your to get exactly what you want on a character and not anything else. Downside less resources compared to Priority or modified priority. I'm not to going to discuss the other build option, as ether everyone is doing it wrong, or it just really doesn't work, and I'm not really sure which.

[Tecumseh]

Xenon, OP is asking about 4th Edition, not 5th.

When I was playing 4th Edition, I preferred karmagen. I liked that it created more well-rounded, realistic characters.

One of the things I didn't care for about build points was that it led to a lot of min-maxing and optimization. It's clear that Mirikon preferred these results, so this may be a matter of personal preference.

The biggest drawback of karmagen was that the math was a headache and far too daunting for new or casual players. Build points were far more approachable. Chummer went a long way to make karmagen plausible for a lot of people who didn't want to get fiddly with scaling costs.

[Mirikon]

Tecumseh, it wasn't the point buy that led to minmaxing and and optimization, but the karma-based advancement rules post-chargen, the sacred cow of increasing cost per rank that should have died long ago meant that (with an average of 3-5 karma a run) you needed to save up your karma from at least 3-5 runs to gain any advancement to your dice pool by a single point. For anyone who was Awakened or Emerged, your skills and stats at the end of chargen were almost guaranteed to be as good as they ever were, unless you were in a game that ran for years, since you needed karma for spells, foci, binding spirits, initiation, and so on. Heaven forbid you wanted to get an Ally Spirit that was more intelligent than a basic Watcher, because you're looking at a year's worth of karma right there alone, after the initiation cost.