ShadowRun 4 Build Point Question

[chaosgirl]

Hey All,


After a LONG time of not running games, Im getting back in to it with Shadowrun 4th.


I do have a question about Build Points.

The previous GM I played with ran a 450 bp high powered, action movie type game. It was really cool but not the type of game Im interested in running.

Im curious has anyone Ran or Played a game that used UNDER 400BP?

If so do you think you were still able to have an interesting character who was able to meet the challenges that the GM gave you, or was it to low to be much fun?

I want to run something gritty and Gibsoneque, but I still want the players to be able to have competent characters they will have fun playing. Im not sure if the best way to do it is fewer BP or just use the More Deadly/More Gritty Rules

[Neo Tin Robo]

Maybe just try restricting how many BP can be spent on wealth, so they don't start with full cyborgs, insanely tricked out weapons, or tons of foci? That would encourage them to spend more on actual skills.

[Seerow]

Pretty sure if you give characters average stats for free (ie human starts with 3 in all stats, trolls start with 5 in str/body, etc), and limit it to only 50 bp on attributes (rather than the normal 1/2 limit), then you can drop starting bp down to 150-200bp while still having usable characters.

This makes it so the characters have average or above average stats, and prevents min-maxing, but still lowers the overall power of the campaign. If you just straight up drop BP availability, then you run into weird situations like you literally cannot have a character with stats that are average for his metatype (it takes 160bp invested in attributes to raise everything to a 3. Dropping available bp to 300 with no other changes means the character can only have 150 invested in attributes, and thus will be weaker even than the average joe, rather than weaker than a prime runner as intended).

[chaosgirl]

Two intresting ideas. It looks like limiting $$$ is a good policy. Not sure about starting everyone off at 3's but it would prevet St 1 Bd 1 Deckers...

[LibraryOgre]

Conversely, you can drop the total BPs BUT don't restrict how much they put into attributes. Because, since skills are cheaper to buy up than attributes, and you can get gear through play, I find you're more likely to get high-stat people with a lot of potential, but not a lot of it realized.

[TheOOB]

As a general rule, I advise against changing the BP total, either up or down. If you want a high powered game, give the characters some additional karma/money to use after creation, and for a lower powered game lower the caps on attributes/skills. The way the prices are set up in the BP system is does not take long until the characters start becoming worthless. At 320BP you only have enough to create the "average person" attributes, for example, and at 350BP you're likely to see characters with one or two stats at 5, and 1 in everything else.

If you want to lower power, you can either lower attribute/skill/availability caps, or you can use the karma creation system and give less than 750 karma to create characters with.

[Seerow]

As a general rule, I advise against changing the BP total, either up or down. If you want a high powered game, give the characters some additional karma/money to use after creation, and for a lower powered game lower the caps on attributes/skills. The way the prices are set up in the BP system is does not take long until the characters start becoming worthless. At 320BP you only have enough to create the "average person" attributes, for example, and at 350BP you're likely to see characters with one or two stats at 5, and 1 in everything else.

This is why my suggestion was to give everyone average stats to start with, and not have it count towards their BP total.

Right now, my group is talking about starting up a new street level campaign, this is looking like the set of house rules we're going with for character generation:

100 BP total
Attributes start at average
Cost of awakened qualities are doubled
Negative Qualities capped at 20 points.
Cost of skills are halved
Base availability limit of 9.
1,500 nuyen per BP
3 free contact points per Charisma.
Contacts cost Loyalty x Connection

The last two aren't really necessary, but something I like to encourage having at least a couple contacts, and emphasizing that having someone who is both loyal and connected is worth more than just a loyalty 1 guy with high connection.

[TheOOB]

At that point you may as well just give them a starting base and give them karma to build with(disclaimer, I *hate* the BP build system, as it encourages a truly legendary level of min-maxing).

[Seerow]

At that point you may as well just give them a starting base and give them karma to build with(disclaimer, I *hate* the BP build system, as it encourages a truly legendary level of min-maxing).

Karma build is even more prone to min-maxing. In karma build it's all about having 1 rank+specialization in whatever skills you want (because seriously raising a skill group costs 66% more than raising an attribute that does everything the group does and then some more!), and doing what you can to get boosted attributes and dice pool modifiers from elsewhere.

Magic characters are even crazier in karmagen, because it allows them to start out initiated (at least I seem to remember this being the case. Looking in RC now I don't see it specified one way or the other). And of course Karmagen still runs into the same problem as BP that merely cutting down the karma without modifying anything else results in opportunities for weirdly designed characters that are still way too strong in one area, and not strong enough in others.

[Need_A_Life]

Cost of awakened qualities are doubled
Would this include Technomancer?


Negative Qualities capped at 20 points.
What's the reasoning behind this? Surely negative qualities are bad enough (or should be) that they pay for themselves. [Okay, a couple of exceptions: Intolerant (mild, humanis Policlub) nets you 5BP for disliking an almost-universally disliked group in a non-outspoken way]


Base availability limit of 9.
1,500 nuyen per BP
Why the change?


3 free contact points per Charisma.
Contacts cost Loyalty x Connection
1) Does this mean that buying a Streetdoc (L:3, C: 1) costs 3BP (rather than 4 previously)? And the Elf Face with Cha 7, for example, gets 21BP worth of free contacts?
2) How would you handle the virtual contacts (Unwired, I believe), who have a variable connection rating?


someone who is both loyal and connected is worth more than just a loyalty 1 guy with high connection.
Wow, I always focused on getting high Loyalty, THEN Connections. I don't always need people to get the info, but I sure don't want my contacts to be leading me into traps TOO often. :smallannoyed:
I've had L: 6, C: 1 contacts before (hey, sometimes you need that guy who's willing to do minor, unimportant things, no questions asked (such as "I need to hide here for a few days. If anyone asks, you haven't seen me for weeks.").:smallcool:

In fact, get some high loyalty junkie streetgang as a contact; having some loud, obnoxious, crazy people willing to do you a solid now and again is very useful. If nothing else, they'll distract people from you by their very presence.

[Seerow]

First, gonna start with Clarification of intent. Obviously the goal was for a lower powered, street level game, but at the same time a lot of things got buffed/given for free, so it may seem counter-intuitive.

Basically, just cutting BP/Karma gives you an unplayable character. But with full Karma/BP, you can make a character who is too far specialized to be suitable in a low powered campaign. And it's incredibly easy to do this by accident. So the goal was to restrict starting power levels, but make sure the characters are playable by giving out free benefits that round out the character in ways that an optimizer would probably avoid normally. Skill costs being cut both makes them an attractive choice compared to attributes, and allows characters with the lower starting BP to afford a better variety of skills without having to up the BP (which without the reduced skill cost would likely lead to more BP being spent on attributes/gear)


Would this include Technomancer?


That was the intention, yes. (Though honestly technomancers are really pitiful in a low power game. They need -lots- of BP/karma to be reasonably useful at what they're expected to do [much more than the equivalent caster]. So while the cost increase was made by the blanket statement, it probably is not needed for balance)


What's the reasoning behind this? Surely negative qualities are bad enough (or should be) that they pay for themselves. [Okay, a couple of exceptions: Intolerant (mild, humanis Policlub) nets you 5BP for disliking an almost-universally disliked group in a non-outspoken way]


A lot (seriously a lot) of the negative qualities are actually pretty light/easy to live with. My experience is that players either take minor ones that don't affect them too much, or maybe a couple that play into their backstory, but either way they almost always cap out on them for the bonus BP. Popular ones for min-maxers include day job, dependent, in debt, uncouth (as long as someone else was playing the face), addictions of various sorts (bonus points for nonharmful ones like Media Junky or Focus Addict)... probably others but those are the big ones I remember offhand coming up for my group a lot.

Anyway, regardless of specific negative qualities, In a 400bp game, 35bp is a little less than 10% of your bp. With these rules, you're playing something closer to am effectively 250-300bp character, cutting down the free points proportionally was something that seemed right. Though I suppose 25 instead of 20 may have been closer to the mark, with all of the changes together 20BP feels like a lot more (since while it's giving less than 10% of total character power, it is giving more like 20% in terms of things you can actually choose, which is a big deal).


Why the change?

Part of the intended lower power level. With 12 availability and 5k nuyen per BP, I can make a cybered character who's nearly a cyber zombie in terms of essence, has well over 20 armor, a high velocity assault rifle he fires with no recoil, and rolls somewhere around 18 dice for shooting stuff, and has a dicepool in the 10-12 range for various stealth/athletic rolls.

I can also, with that kind of money/availability, build a character that has effectively 12+skill as his dicepool for any logic based test (which includes hacking under a common house rule, but also first aid, all of the various build/repair skills, etc).

And that's fine for a normal campaign. But when my group set up this ruleset, we were aiming for a lower power level. That meant restricting the gear significantly.


1) Does this mean that buying a Streetdoc (L:3, C: 1) costs 3BP (rather than 4 previously)? And the Elf Face with Cha 7, for example, gets 21BP worth of free contacts?
2) How would you handle the virtual contacts (Unwired, I believe), who have a variable connection rating?


1) Correct on both counts.
2) How are they handled normally? Honestly I've never had this come up, and can't find it with a flip through Unwired, so I have no idea.


Wow, I always focused on getting high Loyalty, THEN Connections. I don't always need people to get the info, but I sure don't want my contacts to be leading me into traps TOO often.

Well the issue was more people picking up a single contact with Loyalty 6, Connection 6, for 12 BP, who is very well connected and considers you his best friend, and this sort of thing costs literally the same as getting a Loyalty 1//Connection 5 and Loyalty5//Connection1. Which is far less useful. Under the new system, it costs close to 1/4th as much, which seems about right.

It's not that Loyalty is better than Connection, or Connection is better than Loyalty, it's that the two of them together are worth more than either by itself. I hope that makes sense.

[Hyooz]

Wow, I always focused on getting high Loyalty, THEN Connections. I don't always need people to get the info, but I sure don't want my contacts to be leading me into traps TOO often.


I know when I'm running games, I love it when players have high connection/low loyalty contacts, because they're basically plot hooks the players designed themselves. Low loyalty isn't about outright deception and leading you into traps, but more "why should I do this for you again?"

I love these guys because they can provide something the players want, which gives them motivation to do... whatever the contact asks (i.e. whatever I want them to do *evil laugh here*)

[Need_A_Life]

I'm more of a "building my network" sort of 'runner. One day, when a run goes sufficiently bad that I am unable or unwilling to keep 'running myself, I'll have all the contacts I need to set myself up as a fixer.
A fixer needs to keep a healthy network of contacts. :smallcool:

[LibraryOgre]

I tend to give characters a Free contact of reasonable Connection, for which they pay loyalty. It gives me a central fixer that I can route early missions through, until they start developing their own stories.