[UmaroVI]

Karma-generation rules are in Runner's Companion, although there's an errata that is only in german at the moment that is important. The errata'd parts are: race costs karma=bp, and attributes cost new value x5 (not new value x3).

The reason to use karma-generation is that it makes getting lower-rating skills and attributes cheaper and thus using a smaller number of karma points will encourage people to make characters with smaller dicepools, rather than hyperspecialists.

You still want caps because for certain characters, jamming everything into one attribute or whatever is still the way to roll. I would suggest:
capping availability at 8 (14 with the "Restricted Gear" quality)
capping attributes to one at (max-1), and the rest lower than that (so a human could have one 5, and the rest 4 or lower)
capping skills to one at 5, rest at 3 or below, or two at 4, rest at 3 or below.
Hardcap of 4 on Magic and Resonance.
No more than 150,000Y of gear.
550 karma, but (INTxLOGx3) free bp that can only be spent on Knowledge skills.

However, if you are new to GMing/shadowrun, I would actually recommend against messing with the system at first. SR is a very finickety system (and not very well-balanced to start with) and poking around with it is tricky and liable to make things worse. I'd really recommend running a more standard 400 bp game until you feel like your really understand the system and how it works.

And now All4BigGuns will explain why he hates karma-generation to provide an alternate perspective:

[Ugh]

Thank you all again for the replies.  As you can tell from my GM's post, the rules for that game will probably change by the time we get to it. Before it there's the current pathfinder game, a different SR4 game, another pathfinder game, and then the low powered SR4 game.  I do like the idea of a low powered game, we just need to figure out how to do it without gimping the characters.  Now if only I could get a pocket UmaroVI for all my character creation needs.

[All4BigGuns]

Thank you all again for the replies.  As you can tell from my GM's post, the rules for that game will probably change by the time we get to it. Before it there's the current pathfinder game, a different SR4 game, another pathfinder game, and then the low powered SR4 game.  I do like the idea of a low powered game, we just need to figure out how to do it without gimping the characters.  Now if only I could get a pocket UmaroVI for all my character creation needs.

Not possible to have "low powered" withoug ending up with gimped characters. That's what low powered does.

[JustADude]

Ugh is actually going to be a player in my future game where they are gangers, I decided 300 BP because the book says that's a good idea for a low powered game.  I'm still new to Shadowrun and I'm still learning.  Since Umaro said karma and caps work best for a low powered game I kind of want to know what that means?  I get the caps (lowering nuyen and availability and what not) but how does a karma come into play here?

I probably should have posted this elsewhere but it seemed appropriate since at least three people here seemed they would have other ideas.

Karma-gen, from Runner's Companion, has you pay standard Karma prices at character generation, which makes things more expensive at higher rating, which encourages generalization... buying a foundation for everything now, and boosting up your strong-points later. BP-gen, on the other hand, has a flat cost-per-point no matter what the rating is, which encourages you to max out your strong-points now and fill in the secondary stuff with karma later, if ever.

[default_108]

Thanks for all the ideas, much appreciated gives me alot to mull over (Including not doing any sort of restriction and just using the regular rules, maybe add a gear cap to keep them feeling like Gangers [Nuyen or Availability]).  As Ugh said it'll be awhile before we get to this game me and Ugh are just over amitious and make characters long before they are needed.

Thanks for all the input and sorry to threadjack.