[Darzil]

If you wanted better balance, you'd cost skills differently based on their expected frequency, but character generation is complex enough in Shadowrun as it is !

Better balance still would be even more complex, as for things like combat skills you'd probably cost the second and subsequent skills less than the first.

Lets not go there!

At the end of the day, this is a forum for people to get feedback on their character builds. If people don't want criticism (critique is called out in the forum name), then don't post here. I suspect for most people, though, this is a wonderful place to get advice from a huge number of very experienced people who are very helpful in my experience (eg tend to get multiple responses in the first few hours after posting).

Maybe some of the usual gotcha's and some general guideance should exist in a sticky post ? We still have one like that for SR4 !

[All4BigGuns]

If you wanted better balance, you'd cost skills differently based on their expected frequency

Gotta disagree here, though karma costs for advancement should be different than what they are, IMO.

Here's what I think would be a better cost scheme:

Attributes: New Rating x 4
Skills: New Rating

[FST_Gemstar]

"You can try to pick the overall most important skills but no matter what you pick you'll eventually find yourself in a tricky spot."

This is true, whether you super specialize or diversify skills at character generation. No one is going to be able to excel at everything, or even barely handle something. There are more ways to mitigate this than just skills though. That's when you rely on gear, teammates, contacts, magic, creative use skills you do have, etc. . A parachute is going to serve a character a lot better if they jump out of a plane than having a few points in Freefall just for that potentiality. A Levitate spell would be handy too. Maybe a drone that can carry some of your weight to reduce your fall rate. Maybe a new Rigger 5.0 gliding system in that drone would be even better. Freefall and a parachute would be better though for when it does happen. You have to make some choices in Shadowrun, but there are many ways to survive the shadows that go beyond skills. Some of those ways may save your because you doubled down on your specialties (mages taking more spells, riggers maxing pilot aircraft, etc.). At character generation, per the description in core, a character should be excellent at some things, and be able to do some other tasks if needed. No character is expected to have the skills to have the dicepools to handle everything.  I guess a high attribute character with a high rating skillwire system and a machine sprite and skillsoft subscription can be a skill generalist. But that is an optimizing heavy character too.

[Shadowjack]

The archetypes in the book are what I would consider to be Prime Runners and do not represent normal opposition for the players.

Wait, what?! Sorry, but no. A Prime Runner is one that is MUCH more skilled than that. Prime Runners are experienced to the point where characters on par with the Professional Rating 6 NPCs are going to have a hard time.

"Grunts, no matter their Professional Rating, are nameless cannon fodder. They’re not meant to be remembered, whether they’re a match for the PCs or not. Prime runners, though, are different. They have names. They send the grunts out on their errands. They have their own plans and agendas. Most importantly, they move the plot along. “Prime runner” is a catch-all term. They’re not all shadowrunners as such. They are, however, significant characters who recur over the course of the adventure, and frequently over the course of a campaign. If grunts are extras and supporting cast, then prime runners are the special guest stars. They can fall anywhere along the spectrum, from the chief antagonist all the way to the lifelong friend of one of the PCs, and all points in between.

BUILDING PRIME RUNNERS A prime runner shouldn’t be thrown together. Like player characters, they should be built from the ground up, using the Priority System (see Building a Shadowrunner, p. 62), and advanced with Karma. As you build them, keep in mind the strength the NPC should have in relation to the PCs. This will determine how much Karma you’ll need to spend on the prime runner (see the Prime Runner Creation and Advancement table below).

There are four levels of prime runners.

Inferior: These prime runners are generally outclassed by the PCs in a straight fight, but the PCs should be cautious just the same. They frequently have friends who might just outclass the PCs right back.

Equal: These guys are on the same level as the PCs. Many of them will be shadowrunners like the PCs, but some may be company men, government agents, or syndicate enforcers.

Superior: This guy is more than a match for any of the PCs on an individual basis, but he’d be in trouble if the team decided to take him on all at once. They’re not bound by the constraints on skills or gear that apply to starting characters.

Superhuman: Some guys you just don’t mess around with, because they can probably take on your entire team and have a reasonable expectation of success. Like Superior prime runners, they are not bound by the constraints on gear and skills that apply to starting player characters. They should not be encountered very often, and when they are, it should be especially memorable."

[All4BigGuns]

Oh that crud.

Sorry, but I don't subscribe to that and will continue calling those simply "Important NPCs". A true Prime Runner would be what that would call supposedly 'superhuman' level.

For a good example of a True Prime Runner see Harlequin's entry in the SR4A Street Legends.

[FST_Gemstar]

What if we were ok with the slow karma advancement, and recognize that the characters we start with may not have a lot of drastic tall attribute/skill growth over their career.This lends itself to min/maxing at character generation, as growing wide is much more feasible and expected. Decrying "power gaming" while at the same time changing the recommended rate of karma advancement and reducing limits to growth is a little hypocritical. It's just powergaming a different game. Characters often get money for jobs too, and can use that to improve character as well. Or implement a nuyen - karma exchange a la missions to help compensate different growth needs.

Not everyone arrives in the Shadows ready to survive everything, but if they make it long enough, they learn that some basic training in various skills can be helpful.


I don't know what we are discussing anymore -

Is it the way comments are posted in the character creation subforum? I think we can mostly agree to push a little harder on what people are wanting out of criticism and for folks who post more as thought experiments, to make that more explicit. No one wants to make a game less fun for anyone. If not specified by the original poster, a "how can I help" could be a more standard first response.

Is it meanings of numbers on character sheets? I think this is well treaded at this point.  I think a lot of issues here are based on different understandings of these and how it affects our own immersion. We all have different ways of handling this. We can do it without judging each other. Each table plays differently so this is something that is difficult to work out on a general forum like this.

Is it Roleplaying vs. Rollplaying? I think we've learned this is a false opposition.

Is it how to better handle karma advancement?  This is more in houseruling as opposed to character creation issues. I give character advice based on standard karma advancement. If someone plays differently, than let me know that about your character!

[All4BigGuns]

What if we were ok with the slow karma advancement, and recognize that the characters we start with may not have a lot of drastic tall attribute/skill growth over their career.

Having the current advancement as a printed Optional Rule would solve that, but really the base should be for faster advancement.

[Whiskeyjack]

There are some people on here playing the same characters for over a decade. Those characters are very powerful. While I think that's awesome I cannot accept that as a normal play experience. The vast majority of games will fizzle out, not come to a climactic conclusion or continue indefinitely (definitely have been in 4e games that reset after a couple years because the GM felt like the PCs were too strong to really deal with).

For the average game, I think it's good advice to start strong (so you can be cool and succeed for as long as the game may last, which may very well be much shorter than you want it to last) and also have a good advancement mechanic, because saving up for a couple IRL months to buy up one new rank of a skill is just terribly boring and makes you feel like your karma is going nowhere (Awakened have less of a problem here). There's also the fact that ware seems priced for some kind of chargen balance with the result being that you can easily never buy new ware or upgrade existing ware in the life of an entire game, because a 5k payout minus lifestyle is not going to let you upgrade your WR to alpha or your Toner 3 to Toner 4.

[ZombieAcePilot]

Oh that crud.

Sorry, but I don't subscribe to that and will continue calling those simply "Important NPCs". A true Prime Runner would be what that would call supposedly 'superhuman' level.

For a good example of a True Prime Runner see Harlequin's entry in the SR4A Street Legends.

This explains a lot. That character is a gigantic, flaming, sack of mary sue BULLSHIT! If something equal to it showed up in a game I was in, I'd find a rocket launcher and blow it the fuck up. The GM has god like power over the game, lording his dragons and GMPC's over the players is just bullshit no one enjoys.

Further, the players have a great deal of control over who is important in the game. The stat block attached has no bearing on that. Any GM worth their salt will tell you to throw out rules which make you play by the same creation rules as the players. NPC's should get what they need, no more and no less. Sometimes that will be very low cost, sometimes not. Either way the cost does not matter. Total karma is not a good indication of power. Two characters could be built on the same point totals and be vastly different in power level.

As a person who has GM'd, I don't know if I could stand the same level of complexity the PC's have on my NPC's. I have a lot going on when running a game. Simple is the only way to go if you want to stay sane.

[FST_Gemstar]

Perhaps it is ok to build a character you expect to play a lot as is. Emphasize the fun of playing this particular character, and advancement being more of happy side effect of having fun playing as opposed to the goal. I'm not sure I fully stand by this, but the slow advancement mechanics and character gen system/pricing supports this kind of play. Ex. You're probably not going to buy a new deck in game, so pick one that you can live with for your career and that has some mod potential. Maybe don't spend all of your nuyen filling your cyberlimb capacity at character generation because that is going to where you can more consistently upgrade.

[All4BigGuns]

There are some people on here playing the same characters for over a decade. Those characters are very powerful. While I think that's awesome I cannot accept that as a normal play experience. The vast majority of games will fizzle out, not come to a climactic conclusion or continue indefinitely

And this is exactly why default advancement should be faster.


The current system of advancement is all well and good if you're lucky enough to have a game last five to ten years with the same characters/players, but as that isn't what is most likely to occur, something like what I suggested for advancement is more appropriate so that the PCs can actually see some growth in a reasonable amount of time (though implant costs do need to be adjusted downward quite a bit as well for that reason).

[Whiskeyjack]

I don't like game design that's basically "you get what you start with, so suck it." I think it's a crap design philosophy.

[falar]

- because a 5k payout minus lifestyle is not going to let you upgrade your WR to alpha or your Toner 3 to Toner 4.

5k payout is bullcrap. I more or less stick to the tables on p372 for my 'runner's rewards and that gives a pretty good arc of cash.

Using that table, my players are normally facing at least a dice pool of 12 at some point in the run (9000 nuyen), usually have at least one fight where they're outnumbered 2 to 1 with PR 4+ or 3 to 1 with lower (12000), they usually could depend on the speed/subtlety bonus (+3000) and sometimes have public exposure (+3000).

So, a normal run for my group is 15-18k nuyen by the guidelines. Just looking back, I think I've consistently underpaid, so I'm going to have to consistently overpay for the next couple of jobs.

[Darzil]

Part of the issue with character generation is the way advancement doesn't scale in the same way as character generation (in Priority/Sum to Ten anyway, and to a lesser extend in Life Modules).

If I were going to deal with that I'd probably do something like making skill/attribute advancement on a much flatter scale. Say - X Karma for 1 skill skill increase up to 6, then 2X up to 9, then 3X up to 12 or something (to prevent a rush to 12 skill). Attributes at Y Karma per point.

This would pretty much mean that a character that starts optimized then takes other skills to round out, and one that started rounded out then optimized, can end up at the same power level.

[Marcus]

1. I don't see the  point really, there are people that have been here for many years trolling and being abusive and they haven't been banned.

2.I said that because it's true. Every time these discussions pop up a power gamer makes an abusive post. I don't see why I'm not allowed to point that out.

3.Read what I said again. I said "tend", that is not an absolute, clearly. Saying "Never take the Pistols skill because it is shit" is an absolute. There is a huge difference.

4.I don't see what isn't valid about what I said. I don't see why you need any context, either. All the skills, guns and spells are in the book for a reason, do you disagree? I don't like the idea of teaching new players that useful things are useless because all of these things could save your ass.

Again, not trying to force my perspective on anyone, just like I think powergamers should exercise some caution when they give advice.

Well a couple things. First your back to being very prejudicial there Shadow. I absolutely see the point in hitting the report button. The only person who's been personally attacked thus far in this thread is me. Despite Gradivus claims to contrary. He and I did have a private conversation about that, and I can post my side of it if, folks want to read it, but I maintain everything I said earlier was correct. Clearly there is more evidence supporting my points. When I see an abusive poster I hit the report button. The mods show up and do what they do. The system works.

Lets be clear no has said always use the best guns, or never use that skill. What we have said is if you're going to use it. Make sure you do it effectively.That example character had logic 1, you know what happens when you astral combat with spirits, given that stat? Ya get wooped. It's not gonna be fun for anyone, unless your definition of fun include getting wooped by every spirit you try to fight. 

But oddly you're ok with deceiving the new player and sending them out with characters whom are gonna fail and get their team(s) killed? At-least they will be excited about playing the character. Just no. It's not going to help them. It's going to hurt their enjoyment of the game, and by extension it's going to hurt the game.

You're not gonna get the average newbie to understand deeper concepts inside one thread. Odds are they opened the core tried to read through the character gen section got very confused by all the numbers, and we are lucky they came here for help, instead of just throwing up their hands and walking away. Our job is to give them that help. Send them back to their table with a runner who will full-fill the role they choose, and with any luck they will have lots of fun, and continue to play SR.  With play time will come further understanding, and they can make up their own minds on how they like to play and generate characters.

 I'm not huge fan of Harliquen and that ilk, I'll agree there is a time and place for such NPCs. But rarely are they helpful at a table and in general they distract from the PCs, which is counter to the point of the game.