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View Full Version : [SR4]Is increasing the costs of non-humans reasonable?



Longcat
2010-04-06, 10:11 AM
Hi all,
I'm playing in an SR game where the DM has decided that to highlight the facts that metahumans are much rarer than humans, the chargen costs for non-humans will be increased by 50%. Needless to say, I believe this idea is bollocks, since it unfairly punishes the group, especially since our group consists entirely of non-humans.

Question is: How do I talk him out of it in a civil way? Could you help me with arguments supporting my case? I don't want to leave the group over something as minor as that, but I believe this rule will put a great damper on the fun of this game. We've got a Drake and a Vampire character in our group, and it feels like they will be immensely gimped.

Lost Demiurge
2010-04-06, 11:27 AM
Metahuman race costs are expensive enough as is.

Are you sure your GM isn't just annoyed at having to deal with the shenanigans of a Drake and a Vampire character?

Longcat
2010-04-06, 02:19 PM
I'm pretty sure about it, since we take turns DMing, and he plays a shapeshifter.

GreyMantle
2010-04-06, 02:27 PM
That is absolutely absurd. I mean, I've played games where all of the basic metatypes are 25 BP, and there have been no serious balance issues.

If he wants to accentuate the fact that other metatypes are rare, just have them show up in the game less often! Simple as that. And have normal people say things like, "Dude, you're a frakkin' troll! We don't see that very often!"

(Although, I thought I remembered reading somewhere that humans make up roughly 50% of the world's population, and the other 50% is the other metatypes. And, if 1 out of 2 people you meet are non-human, I dunno if that really counts as "rare.")

Trekkin
2010-04-06, 02:52 PM
Other than the aforementioned wreckage this makes of balance, unless you've got a gaming group of 500, whatever metatypes you pick are going to be rare anyway. If (s)he decides to only include twenty NPC trolls in the world and you play a troll, trolls aren't suddenly common.

This is perhaps an example of the availability heuristic; yes, the closest people on hand aren't human, but as many of the rest as (s)he likes can be. I would point out that this is less highlighting and more forcing an artificial and ultimately ineffective conformity.

In fact, it'd be a better roleplaying opportunity if you all were nonhuman; it's tough to escape after runs when you can all be identified fairly conclusively simply by metatype.