Starting credit is crazy variable. You get 5K out of the box (barring certain backgrounds) but you can turn in build points for 1K/ea...So players can enter the game with (in theory) anywhere from 0 to 105,000 (Since you are required to spend 700 points in specific ways and can only spend a maximum of (I think, it has been a little bit) 100 pts on money.). The thing is that this isn't THAT big a deal. Careful massaging of contacts and connections could in theory result with characters having far more valuable gear than could be bought with 300K anyway. Post-scarcity environment, etc., etc. There seem to be several different philosophies as to how to make an 'efficient' character which all rely on certain assumptions. 1. If you assume you'll be staying in your starting morph a while and it won't be dying, burn a lot of money on biological/cybernetic enhancements. This is clearly a gamble. If you are wrong, and your morph becomes grey goo half an hour into play, you've just lost a large chunk of your 'starting capital'. 2. If you assume you will have access to a cornucopia machine, burn a lot of money on blueprints of useful things. Nanite swarms are potentially terrifying, and I've seen some sneaky player uses of them which pretty well dissolved obstacles the GM clearly intended to stop/turn/take the characters a while to solve. Particularly nanite swarms tamped into seeker heads. That's just dirty pool. 3. If you assume you won't have access to a cornucopia machine and you won't be keeping your morph very long, start out as a pauper (financially) but with a boatload of skills and really fantastic rep, and use your rep to get almost anything almost anywhere you go. Three is clearly the most flexible, but from a roleplaying perspective won't make a lot of sense for some characters. For a rollplayer/min-maxer however, it is absolutely the most reliable and durable 'build'.

Sure thing. I highly recommend (especially for gamemasters) trying to build some 'tweaked' characters to see just how crazy things can get in chargen. One of each of the above versions is not a bad start. Then figure out what sorts of crazy stuff you can do with all the things you can buy/blueprint, etc.

Arenamontanus wrote:

A very non-munchkin player effortlessly wrecked the rep system.

Rep is terrifyingly effective. Rep and rep-use are some of the few things I think I'd really want to put upper limits on as far as starting characters go.

Re-Laborat wrote:

3. If you assume you won't have access to a cornucopia machine and you won't be keeping your morph very long, start out as a pauper (financially) but with a boatload of skills and really fantastic rep, and use your rep to get almost anything almost anywhere you go.

Why would Rep have more or less of an advantage over Creds than usual, in this situation? Personally, I think a Desktop Cornucopia Machine is a good investment for a starting character whose morph is not expected to survive for long. Grab a DCM and blueprints for a Cyberbrain and a suitable morph or two (has to be small enough to physically fit inside the machine, e.g. Swarmanoid, Flexbot, Dragonfly, Guardian Angel robot...). You can split the initial outlay among the party if you want to, and it's going to pay itself back within a month or so of game time.

Re-Laborat wrote:

Arenamontanus wrote:

A very non-munchkin player effortlessly wrecked the rep system.

Rep is terrifyingly effective. Rep and rep-use are some of the few things I think I'd really want to put upper limits on as far as starting characters go.

I agree. Have a group of PCs start with brand new characters, most of whom have at least one rep score above 80 and another above 60, makes it very hard to think up good loot or rewards. From another angle, I had a character who got a couple rez points. I wanted to raise my throwing skill from 10 to 40, but that would have cost a tremendous amount of rez that was really absurd. So I thought I'd buy a skillsoft- but the rez didn't translate into enough money. So, I used those couple points of rez to bump my g-rep from 30 to 60, and voila, a little bit of game time and some favors and I can get the skillware and implant and blueprints of both. Spending rez on anything other than rep seems a waste. I really want to play a scarcity campaign, a really gritty cyberpunk one where every credit counts and getting those first few rep points means the difference between the punk who everybody beats up and a local kingpin in that neighborhood. I would have to increase the cost of rep during character generation by a factor of 10 or more, and reduce the starting CP.

Unity wrote:

Good rewards: prototype morph designs and augmentations. State of the art software that is not yet available with any sort of reliability regardless of high rep. Similarly scarce materials that are not openly available, and can only be acquired through the completion of what you are having them do.

Did you mean to post this in the other thread? (my apologies if not and I misunderstood your post)