Shadowrun Character Creation(mostly 3rd, but early in general)

So going a little more into the typical SR3 character generation, generally speaking there are three mostly used:

-Priority(like the SR3 Core Rulebook)

-Points(in the Companion)

-BeCKS(Karmagen in newer versions, it used to be a set of houserules that was actually adopted because it worked so well.)

In SR2, BeCKS didn't exist(well, maybe in some people's houses) at the time, but Sum-to-10 was a bonus method in the SR2 companion, but I'll only touch on that at the end.

I've used all, and I really like BeCKS the best(though I enjoy all of them for their own reasons.) I'll go over real fast all of the systems and some ups and downs of them, for those who might be looking to try out Shadowrun 2^nd or 3^rd edition!

So Priority is where you have A-E, and you have to pick Attributes, Metatype, Magic, Resources and Skills and assign them, with A being the most important thing and E being the least. If you want to be human, E goes to metatype, but metahumans have to pay extra(C for trolls and elves, D for dwarves and orks, in SR2 this was A for everyone), and mages have to pay(A for full mage or shaman, B for an adept. In SR2, A was metatype, and B or C was magic. Yeah, they were stiff costs in those days.

It was a nice system since it was quick; you basically had your idea and tossed some priorities into place. General rules of thumb were if you played a Decker or Rigger, you picked priority A resources due to the cost of 'ware and equipment. If you wanted a mage, one of your priorities was picked for you depending on what kind, and so on.

Its drawbacks was that it didn't cover a huge amount of ground in terms of Resources. For the first three, you either got a million nuyen, 400k, or 90k; there wasn't too much middle ground, which could mean you ended up spending more than 400k but not too much more, leaving you with like another 450k to end up trying to make up shit on how to spend. Or if you wanted to play a more 'Ganger' type of human and you took Resources C, you'd have to make up some cyberware to spend since you'd probably playing someone living a squatter lifestyle without much in the way of stuff.

Plus occasionally being able to fine-tune your Attribute or Skill points is nice, though Attributes were fairly well spaced out with 30, 27, 24, 21 and 18; it was very easy to find something that fit.

Moving onto point-based, this originated in SR2's Companion. The point values that you started with differed(skills were handled differently in those days), but generally speaking you got 120 average in SR3 suggested(I usually took the book example and gave 123 for a tiny bonus-this never got out of hand and could just be used for a round-out skill or something), and 100 in SR2. You had some limits(like in SR3, no more than 60 points on skills, etc, GM could set differences but I find the book ones were fine), but otherwise you looked at things like Attributes 2 Build Points for 1, Skills were 1 for 1, and Resources were on a different chart; 30 Build Points net you a million, where taking the bottom level(IIRC, 500 or so), you GAINED 5 points. Magic and Metatype had a cost as well.

A nice bit with the Resources is that they included a couple of other amounts; 650,000 and 250,000. This took care of one of the Priority issues I mentioned above. It also lets you fine-tune characters; in Priority, Skills for example were 50, 40, 34, 30 and 27; but you could take, say, 45, or 37.

It had two downsides; one being that it simply took more time, particularly for new players. Two, mundane humans had a clear edge(even more so), over metahumans(or just humans in general.) The metahuman cost was just enough that humans often had quite a bit more to play with in 3e(in 2e, actually, this drawback wasn't so much in, due to them being Priority A.) It didn't unbalance them, but more metahuman players may have felt sometimes like they wanted to go human for those extra 10 skills or whanot(which was fairly significant-in fact, the skills is where the difference mostly was. Attributes were made up for from meta attribute bonuses.)

Finally, BeCKS(named after the creator), or Karmagen-being my favorite.

In the other systems, there was a tendency to do a little more minmaxing than one might have to, mostly due to the cost of raising things in game. After you made characters, you'd advance them later with karma(experience), and stuff had escalating costs. So it was actually worth it more to a lot of people to buy up stuff early, and then buy low-level skills in game. Numerically, this was sound, but a lot of starting characters missed out on rounding-out skills because a 2 in game cost half as much as upping a 5 to a 6(or a 1 base, 3 specialization cost 1/3 as much!)

BeCKS gets rid of that. To give an example:

Someone is creating their whatever, and they have a 5 in 2 skills(maybe they're making a decker, and they have 5's in both Computer B/R and Electronics B/R.) They now have a choice to increase them to 6, or spend the points on getting a small round-out skill. Under Priority or Points, where characters are built differently, those 6's in game would cost at least 9 Karma each, or 18 Karma, where the 2 skill would cost 4. It then becomes a case of 'why wait.'

Under BeCKS, you're actually CREATING the character from the ground up with Karma. So that 18 Karma could buy:

FOUR skills at 2 with 2 points leftove

One skill at 4(actually damn good!) and one at 2

Two skills at 3 with 2 points leftover

And so on. It suddenly becomes much more appealing to take the extra skills! Even though, yes, getting the 6's in game will still cost a lot, it simply becomes a case of looking at the numbers and it has a mental effect. It's like people, I find, WANT to make more rounded characters under BeCKS. Some skill lists can look downright OP under BeCKS sometimes. The typical cost(attributes depending) of two 6's and a 5 under BeCKS is 81 Karma total(there are formulas for this and programs that do it for you.) That 81 Karma could be used to get five 4's and a three, literally doubling the number of skills.

Also, you can completely fine tune everything, down to spell points, money(money is done in small increments) and so on.

Its only real drawback, IMO, is time. It's by far the lengthiest character generation method, and new players can find it overwhelming. Also, it pays to have a calculator on hand, or at least something like NSRCG(the old SR3 character generation program.) At the very least, you want scratch paper and the BeCKS guide(though scratch paper is helpful for people with high Resources under any system.)

So there we have it. Those looking into SR3 to actually play, there's some description of the character generation, and in particular why I favor BeCKS. It's just so flexible!

Yeah, this post was a LOT more for the 'nerds' than the people who like reading cyberpunk fiction, but once in awhile I try to do a nerdy post like this. Will probably have some character sheets up too soon!