[virgil]

I've been a DM for years and years, but never with Shadowrun. I'm about to start with a group, using only Core, Aresenal, Augmentation, & Street Magic; as well as some relatively simple house rules...
* Skills, Knowledge Skills, Specializations, and Skill Groups at half BP cost
* Skill groups possess the transitive property, so if you buy one skill up in a group, then buy another, you can buy the rest of the group to match at the remaining cost; and the same goes for purchasing a group and then breaking it up (buy a group up to 4, then pay for the remainder to raise one of the group to 6)
* Frank Trollman's Ends of the Matrix fully implemented
* Karma replaced with BP (cannot spend on contacts or nuyen after character creation), session rewards are BP = 2/3 * Karma. Items that only have karma costs are halved to determine BP cost, except for initiation/submersion (so 10+(Grade x 3)BP per initiation, before discounts from ordeals)
* Magic/Resonance at flat 10BP per rating, even if buying the current maximum (so 50BP to go from 1 to 6)
* Contacts cost [Loyalty x Connections]cp; each BP gives you 3cp, encouraging more lower end contacts instead of high-end executive life-debts
* Adept's Improved Ability is .25/level for all skills
* Improved Physical Attribute is .5/level for all attributes
* No sustaining fociOtherwise, I've got three players heavily experienced with 3rd edition and are touching 4th for the first time, and one other player who's got about a year of experience with just D&D. One is planning on making a dedicated human hacker with ~4 Essense worth of 'ware & a smidgen of rigging, another's playing a human phys-adept with poisoned (Immunity quality for Cyanide) crossbow bolts and a monowhip, another's an elven face adept that's using the core chassis of this forum's revamped archetypes (advocated for Lost Love & Trust Fund quality for backstory, which I might permit). The newbie is playing a beefy (highest Body of the group, so very likely highest armor) satyr mage parkour-ist with 11 dice spellcasting and 14 dice summoning (12 binding); and as I nominally don't allow the Runner's Companion, there's no mechanical change with being a satyr over an ork (pure aesthetic).

As an aside, when I thought about whether being a satyr should count as a distinctive quality, I was fascinated at look at the demographics of satyrs. Presuming they crop up only in those with Greek ethnicity, because of their high rate of magical talent, the math says there's likely near as many satyr mages as ork mages in FDC. This assumes only a 1% rate of magic talent for 'plain' orks, as I've yet to find hard numbers regarding magic demographics. I heard rumours of one book setting it for 1:10,000 or something like that, which is a number I will flat-out ignore.

The group will be set in DeeCee, year 2071. I'll try to stick roughly to what's been established as far as in-game historical events, but will largely ignore anything new coming out unless I like it, and will be upfront with the group about it. The first session is intended to be a milk run, some T99 manager wants to get Lucifer bulbs for his department's research at less than market price and heard that some is being delivered to the Illuminates; they'll find out after some legwork it's being held temporarily in the 'executive' suite at a Stuffer Storage facility; which has grand total of two corpsec, two guard dogs, basic alarms, keypad maglocks on every locker, and a Force 3 ward on the executive suite locker room.

Any general advice for things to watch out for, condemnations to me or my players' choices, missions that would fit this group, etc?

[emsquared]

Those are some ... interesting ... house rules.

Seems like you're setting yourself up for massive abuse with the whole, halving of skills cost thing. Maybe it wouldn't play out this way, but it seems like there's next to no reason to raise most attributes at all until you have hit all of your desired skill hard-caps. Know what I'm saying? You're going to end up (quite quickly) with PCs who are the worlds best Everything. Also don't understand the throwing away with of Karma. Seems like using Karma-gen and just allotting your players X free Karma for skills at start would make way more sense and be way easier to deal with post-chargen (no wonky calculating needed). And with your new Magic/Powers rules, as is evidenced by your group's composition, you've turned Shadowrun fully into Magic-run. Not condemning, just don't understand why.

[virgil]

Abuse? Skills were/are way overpriced in comparison to attributes, and in a nominally skill-based system, I'd prefer skills to take precedence over attributes rather than vice versa.

BP-then-Karma where initial BP expenditures are min/max create very large disparities that I disapprove of. Runner Companion's KarmaGen, like nearly everything else in that book, is borked (admitted by at least two SR authors I know). The  numbers are smaller, just as easy to grok as Karma (easier, if anything), and I don't mind a largely linear advancement; as that keeps progression from going into a crawl, as a common problem that I've seen in such systems.

For the magic/resonance thing, it's still expensive to get from 6 to 7, as Initiation will only raise the maximum rather than the attribute itself. I've considered the idea of removing Exceptional Attribute quality and just having the final point & the one point past the racial max in any attribute be 20BP each (barring Magic/Resonance), but most of the rough drafts I've seen so far aren't running into that problem yet, so it's something I'll discuss.

I know for a fact that the character choices were made independent of the house-rules (especially the ork mage). The player poison-adept only knew SR3 and is still getting used to SR4, and I actually made the changes to powers after he made his rough draft to help the specific player. I personally feel Combat skills to be overpriced to begin with, so it wasn't a hard decision to make. The face adept made his decision *purely* because he wanted a chassis for a face, and was going to use the one in the book; since I've yet to see anyone say that the sample characters in the book were any good, I pulled what seemed the most pure face on the archetype replacement thread as a suggestion for a better chassis to use (he'll have to take out the RC and Way of the Adept stuff, of course).

[RHat]

1: Skills are not way overpriced.  This is an attribute+skill system, not a skills system - one of the differences between 3 and 4.  Might not hurt to put attributes up to about 6xNew Rating or 7xNew Rating, but halving skill costs is not good - there's a number of other karma costs that screws with, and it just overcorrects the small of attribute/skill cost comparisons.

2: If you want to unify creation and advancement, use Karmagen from Runner's Companion.  Advancement is curved for damn good reason, and you should not mess with that.  And I would love to see who "admitted" Karmagen is "borked", because I'm fairly certain they'll turn out not to be in a position to "admit" anything.

3: Raising Magic in SR4 does a lot for you - for example, if directly raises your spell force, because force is chosen at time of casting and the max force is based on Magic.  It also lets you get more powerful spirits without taking Physical Drain.  Resonance does the same with sprites and complex form threaded ratings.  The attribute does way too much for you to be that cheap.

The effect of these houserules is not to fix anything, rather to make things a little more like a previous edition while

[JoeNapalm]

SR4A isn't perfect, but I am a bit puzzled why, your first time running a system that has been round for a quarter century or so and has been through four editions, your first instinct is to muck about with what is arguably the most complex CharGen system ever devised.

I mean, houserule away, but I'd run it for awhile, first.

Oh! But fix Scatter...


-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

[RHat]

SR4A isn't perfect, but I am a bit puzzled why, your first time running a system that has been round for a quarter century or so and has been through four editions, your first instinct is to muck about with what is arguably the most complex CharGen system ever devised.

I mean, houserule away, but I'd run it for awhile, first.

-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

Yeah, it's really best to learn how a system works before you go messing around with it.

[The_Gun_Nut]

What RHat said.

[All4BigGuns]

SR4A isn't perfect, but I am a bit puzzled why, your first time running a system that has been round for a quarter century or so and has been through four editions, your first instinct is to muck about with what is arguably the most complex CharGen system ever devised.

I mean, houserule away, but I'd run it for awhile, first.

-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

Yeah, it's really best to learn how a system works before you go messing around with it.

Well, from looking at the house rule list, he's basically taking to heart the BS spouted by the trolls who just talk smack about everything that CGL does.

[RHat]

SR4A isn't perfect, but I am a bit puzzled why, your first time running a system that has been round for a quarter century or so and has been through four editions, your first instinct is to muck about with what is arguably the most complex CharGen system ever devised.

I mean, houserule away, but I'd run it for awhile, first.

-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

Yeah, it's really best to learn how a system works before you go messing around with it.

Well, from looking at the house rule list, he's basically taking to heart the BS spouted by the trolls who just talk smack about everything that CGL does.

This might explain why the game designer in me looks at that list and wants to punch something.

[Glyph]

I would say that 400 BP with those house rules is the equivalent of 500 or so BP under "normal" rules, meaning you should expect prime runners (close to maxed in their specialty, covered in other areas).  The players being new to the system might offset that.  I hope you relaxed the Availability limits for 'ware a bit, to allow augmented characters to keep up with the boost you have given to adepts.

[Prodigy]

I have said this a lot, but as a GM, the system AS A WHOLE is great and relatively balanced. Run with it. Then house rule as the game goes on.

[Mara]

I have said this a lot, but as a GM, the system AS A WHOLE is great and relatively balanced. Run with it. Then house rule as the game goes on.

Truth!

I am sorry, Virgil, that you are so fixated on one group of people's beliefs that there is something wrong with the system. Have
you played it under the standard rules? If not then you should definately not be making what essentially amounts to a whole
new ruleset for your House Rules. You do not yet understand how everything interacts, and thus cannot make an informed
decision on how the changes will effect things.

[virgil]

Fixated seems a bit harsh, as does the declaration that I only listen to CGL-smacking trolls. The accusation that such house-rules are to make it more like a previous edition seem...unfounded. I don't need to sour me or my players' experience with the system with what is a plainly & provenly broken Matrix system, for example (hence using Ends). My opinion of RC and its quality was there before I heard anyone else talk about it, and was only confirmed by the writer of KarmaGen (Ancient History) calling the book terrible.

That revelation leaves BP just as valid as KarmaGen, IMO. There is a clear need to adjust for the abuse inherent in differing creation from advancement. I am familiar with triangular advancement (Karma) from other systems, & the curve is absolutely not steep enough to actually make all-in specialization a bad idea; psychologically maybe, but anyone who looks at the math should see it, and my experience is that it psychologically just makes advancement feel stagnant. There are real things that would actually discourage hyper-specialization, truly exponential costs and an enforced pyramid (eg. four 3s for every 6) being two ideas off the top of my head, but those house-rules are truly drastic & untested. BP is established, simple, doesn't seem to break the game at the outset, and allows for steady advancement. The concern for overly rapid advancement would require that the game last for 2+ years of weekly games to be a real concern; and it's statistically much more likely to last for half that at best. I'll admit that the initiation cost rule was misleading, as it was supposed to mean 13BP for the first initiation rather than every one.

Yes, it's a Skill+Attribute system, so when raising four skills costs as much as raising an attribute linked to 10 or 18 (Intuition & Agility, respectively) skills, something is rotten in Denmark. Strength, Body, & Willpower were outstripped to begin with; but merging Strength w/Body and making Willpower more than a mage tax is an actual significant set of house rules.

[emsquared]

Your group has admittedly never gamed in 4E before, therefore your house-rules are based entirely on something other than actual experience and a holistic use of the system. And given that 10s of 1,000s of people game with the vanilla rules easily and happily, well, doesn't leave a whole lot of options as to where your pre-concieved notions come from. Math? Sure. But the greater assumptions you are making overlying that is the players choices regarding the math, and even worse you are assuming what they will be and what they should be - this is a poor approach. I don't think anyone was criticizing your use of Ends, everyone has their preferences regarding the Matrix, so that's irrelevant. And your anecdotal, context-less "quote" from Ancient History holds about as much water as a sieve.

So, we're left with the statement that you dislike "all-in specialization". Never mind that this should be left to the players to decide if they like, what is/are the alternative(s)? Generalization (which is completely pointless when you have an adequate number of PCs)? Or some lesser degree(s) of specialization? Either way, whether they specialize or not is a choice that is and should be left to the players, the vanilla rules don't prevent this choice, nor even penalize it really, beyond that you're just not as good at any one thing as someone else (*whisper*because you don't specialize in it*whisper*). You haven't made all-in specialization harder, you've made it easier. Thing is, your whole group will be all-in specialized in many things. As many things are pretty easy to tack on to just about any build (Stealth, Hacking, Facing), therefore you're decreasing the viability of any character oriented towards one of those roles. And if you and your group prefer anybody to be able to fill just about any particular role, that's great, but that doesn't mean Karma is broken. It means you and/or your group don't like having to make choices and having weaknesses. That's all your doing, eliminating your groups reliance upon one another and individual weaknesses.

[GiraffeShaman]

Any general advice for things to watch out for, condemnations to me or my players' choices, missions that would fit this group, etc?

Perhaps spice up the opening milk run by having some sort of minor hiccup/complication. Perhaps there is an unexpected employee or two in the Stuffer shack executive suite.