In my campaign, which uses essentially a mixture of SRII and SR3 rules plus
a lot of house rules, something recently came up about raising skills using >karma. The thing is that concentrations and specializations (or, in SR3, just >specializations) very much work against you if you have them. Somehow, this >never came up over 30 years of playing this game, but now it bugs me and I’m >looking for a reasonable solution that sticks close to the original rules :)
The BTB rule is that raising the general skill doesn’t raise >concentrations/specializations along with it — so if you have, say, Athletics >(Climbing) at 3 (5), then you need to spend 4 × 2 = 8 good karma to raise >that to 4 (5).
However, if you start out with _just_ Athletics 3, and then take a Climbing >at 4 and raise it to 5, followed by raising the skill to Athletics (Climbing) >4 (5) as above, you will actually spend (4 + 5) × 1.5 + 4 × 2 = 21 karma >(since fractions are rounded down).
All fine and dandy. BUT: if you start with Athletics 3, then you could have >the _whole_ skill at 5 for just 18 karma, saving you three points _and_ being >better allround than if you buy Climbing separately first.
And this is where the problem is: the cost of raising the base skill
is too cheap compared to the cost of increasing the specialization.
A simple fix would be to increase the multiplier of raising the base skill, say from New Level x2 to New Level x3.
Fearless Leader of shadowrn.understairs.nl * Triangle Virtuoso <-
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998 <-
Fearless Leader of shadowrn.understairs.nl * Triangle Virtuoso <-
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998 <-
In my campaign, which uses essentially a mixture of SRII and SR3 rules plus a >lot of house rules, something recently came up about raising skills using >karma. The thing is that concentrations and specializations (or, in SR3, just >specializations) very much work against you if you have them. Somehow, this >never came up over 30 years of playing this game, but now it bugs me and I’m >looking for a reasonable solution that sticks close to the original rules :)
The BTB rule is that raising the general skill doesn’t raise >concentrations/specializations along with it — so if you have, say, Athletics >(Climbing) at 3 (5), then you need to spend 4 × 2 = 8 good karma to raise >that to 4 (5).
However, if you start out with _just_ Athletics 3, and then take a Climbing >at 4 and raise it to 5, followed by raising the skill to Athletics (Climbing) >4 (5) as above, you will actually spend (4 + 5) × 1.5 + 4 × 2 = 21 karma >(since fractions are rounded down).
All fine and dandy. BUT: if you start with Athletics 3, then you could have >the _whole_ skill at 5 for just 18 karma, saving you three points _and_ being >better allround than if you buy Climbing separately first.
That is to say, concentrations and/or specializations (depending on your >edition of choice) seem to be a reasonably good choice when making a >character, to get more effective at the things you can do out of the starting >blocks. However, they're a very poor choice for a character spending good >karma, because if you later increase the general skill, you’ve wasted >everything you spent to get the concentration/specialization to the rating >that the general skill is now.
We thought we had a fix: if you have a concentration in a skill, spending the >karma for raising the general skill will also raise concentrations etc., but >also allow the choice of raising only the general skill by spending (new >rating × .5) karma — that is, the difference between raising the general >skill and raising a concentration. That _looks_ like it’s a good solution, >until you run some numbers:
* 3 (5) to 4 (6) is 4 × 2 = 8 karma
* 3 (5) to 4 (5) is 4 × .5 = 2 karma
* 3 (5) to 3 (6) is 6 × 1.5 = 9 karma
IMHO, the problem there is the difference between the first and the last: by >increasing the skill as a whole, you gain _more_ yet spend a point less >karma. This gets a lot worse with higher relative ratings:
* 3 (10) to 3 (11) is 10 × 1.5 = 15 karma
* 3 (10) to 4 (11) is 4 × 2 = 8 karma …
That doesn’t work, if you ask me. This way, it’s pretty much always cheaper >to raise both at once than to raise just the specialization, and the greater >the difference in ratings, the worse this gets.
And all of this mess gets even worse if you have more than one concentration >or specialization …
I can’t think of a good way to fix any of this, other than to ignore it by >sticking to the original rules. If so, my conclusion is that it’s always >better after character creation to not bother with concentrations or >specializations at all, but save your karma for a bit longer so you can raise >the general skill instead.
Thoughts and ideas would be very welcome :)
--
Gurth@xs4all.nl - http://www.understairs.nl | www.plasticwarriors.org
Dat is zoveel beter dan domweg gelukkig zijn
Fearless Leader of shadowrn.understairs.nl * Triangle Virtuoso <-
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998 <-
You could introduce the SR4 method: specialisations are a flat +2 on the
base skill, and rise automatically with them. Of course, that makes them quite cheap at higher skill levels, so you may want to consider the cost
of acquiring a specialisation post-chargen, but it otherwise solves the problem.
Fearless Leader of shadowrn.understairs.nl * Triangle Virtuoso <-
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998 <-
In my campaign, which uses essentially a mixture of SRII and SR3 rules plus a >lot of house rules, something recently came up about raising skills using >karma. The thing is that concentrations and specializations (or, in SR3, just >specializations) very much work against you if you have them. Somehow, this >never came up over 30 years of playing this game, but now it bugs me and I’m >looking for a reasonable solution that sticks close to the original rules :)
The BTB rule is that raising the general skill doesn’t raise >concentrations/specializations along with it — so if you have, say, Athletics >(Climbing) at 3 (5), then you need to spend 4 × 2 = 8 good karma to raise >that to 4 (5).
However, if you start out with _just_ Athletics 3, and then take a Climbing >at 4 and raise it to 5, followed by raising the skill to Athletics (Climbing) >4 (5) as above, you will actually spend (4 + 5) × 1.5 + 4 × 2 = 21 karma >(since fractions are rounded down).
All fine and dandy. BUT: if you start with Athletics 3, then you could have >the _whole_ skill at 5 for just 18 karma, saving you three points _and_ being >better allround than if you buy Climbing separately first.
That is to say, concentrations and/or specializations (depending on your >edition of choice) seem to be a reasonably good choice when making a >character, to get more effective at the things you can do out of the starting >blocks. However, they're a very poor choice for a character spending good >karma, because if you later increase the general skill, you’ve wasted >everything you spent to get the concentration/specialization to the rating >that the general skill is now.
We thought we had a fix: if you have a concentration in a skill, spending the >karma for raising the general skill will also raise concentrations etc., but >also allow the choice of raising only the general skill by spending (new >rating × .5) karma — that is, the difference between raising the general >skill and raising a concentration. That _looks_ like it’s a good solution, >until you run some numbers:
* 3 (5) to 4 (6) is 4 × 2 = 8 karma
* 3 (5) to 4 (5) is 4 × .5 = 2 karma
* 3 (5) to 3 (6) is 6 × 1.5 = 9 karma
IMHO, the problem there is the difference between the first and the last: by >increasing the skill as a whole, you gain _more_ yet spend a point less >karma. This gets a lot worse with higher relative ratings:
* 3 (10) to 3 (11) is 10 × 1.5 = 15 karma
* 3 (10) to 4 (11) is 4 × 2 = 8 karma …
That doesn’t work, if you ask me. This way, it’s pretty much always cheaper >to raise both at once than to raise just the specialization, and the greater >the difference in ratings, the worse this gets.
And all of this mess gets even worse if you have more than one concentration >or specialization …
I can’t think of a good way to fix any of this, other than to ignore it by >sticking to the original rules. If so, my conclusion is that it’s always >better after character creation to not bother with concentrations or >specializations at all, but save your karma for a bit longer so you can raise >the general skill instead.
Thoughts and ideas would be very welcome :)
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