Human best race?

[frdnwsm]

I'm looking over the racial bonuses and profession types, and it looks to me that humans are the best choice regardless of the profession you want to follow. It would be different if their racial stat max was 8, since that could be a handicap late on, but 9 will let you excel at pretty much anything. A higher value in a key stat mght be an end game bonus but hardly mandatory.

Follow my logic here. Say I want to be a phsical adept; Trolls get a +1 on strength and body, both key stats. Best choice, right? I disagree.

Let's say a troll is born; we will consider all the newborn's stats to start at 0, then being a troll, str and bod go up to 1. Anything above that we will get by using karma. Human is born, stats 0, uses 2 karma to get str and bod up to 1, putting us on a par with the troll. This leaves us with a total plus of 1 karma left unused.

+1 karma is hardly a gamebreaker, but could let us get a new skill/stat level one run sooner. Or, you could grab a spellcasting rank right away and be able to use strip armor 1.

Comments?

[OptoNick]

Yep, human is a best choice unless you're not going to max out some skills to the maximum, i.e. Charisma=12 - the ultimate Face/Shaman can be only an elf. That's a waste of Karma, ofc, but a fun for roleplaying on second-third-etc walktrough

[jmck]

I disagree. I go for elf for the higher max quickness, with no real penalty. You lose out on 1 point of karma, total, (Cha 2 starting = 2 of the 3 extra karma humans get). Dwarves have a similar situation to elves, but with different attributes having higher maximums.

I tend to end the game with 10 or 11 effective quickness and ranged skills. I'm perfectly happy to give up 1 karma for a higher maximum to my most important combat attribute and skills.

[Knightwork]

From a straight karma perspective, the Troll tops Human, since starting at 2 Body and Strength costs 4 karma, while Humans only get 3 points to play with at the start. Yeah, the racial maximums for Trolls do kick some professions off the preferred list, but hey, if you want to roleplay a Troll Shaman/Decker go for it! If you want to work on your strengths (ahem), Trolls are generally kick-ass for combat. Just as Dwarves are primed to be either Adept or Mage, due to their +1 Wil and the stat max. Munchkin min/max if you want, or RP your choices (like the Elf I started with 8 Charisma and no skills to speak of), just make sure you're having fun!

[frdnwsm]

Originally posted by Knightwork:

From a straight karma perspective, the Troll tops Human, since starting at 2 Body and Strength costs 4 karma, while Humans only get 3 points to play with at the start.

You are following a different logic path than I am. I am assuming the role of a newborn with 0 in all skill slots. Getting to 1 in str and body costs 1 for both troll and human, with the human having 1 left over.

And yes, I did mention an exception for those who want to get a key attribute to over 9.

Theory is all well and good, but it needs to be proven. I am going to see if my reasoning holds up. I'll generate two new characters, one troll and one human, and see how much karma is needed to give each one identical stats/skills. If I am right, the human will have one extra left over.

[di eshor ribly]

Originally posted by frdnwsm:

Originally posted by Knightwork:

From a straight karma perspective, the Troll tops Human, since starting at 2 Body and Strength costs 4 karma, while Humans only get 3 points to play with at the start.

You are following a different logic path than I am. I am assuming the role of a newborn with 0 in all skill slots. Getting to 1 in str and body costs 1 for both troll and human, with the human having 1 left over.

And yes, I did mention an exception for those who want to get a key attribute to over 9.

The only problem with your logic path is that all 'newborns' are born with a minimum of 1 in each stat. The game engine doesn't allow 0's. The troll, in fact, gets 4 'free' karma points that are pre-spent.

Edit: Skills are an entirely different matter, of course.

[frdnwsm]

OK, the answer is ... it depends on the profession. The character generation page only mentions racial bonuses, not the negatives. The fact is, trolls are actually penalized in a couple of areas. I made one error in my calculations; I thought humans got a +1 better on quickness than trolls, but I was wrong. They only are better in 2 categories. For a combat adept the troll wins out by 2 Karma. Here's the breakdown.

Troll 26 karma to spend.
Body 5
Str 4 close 1
Quick 2 dodge 1
Int 1
Will 3
Char 1

Human 29 karma to spend.
Body 4
Str 3 close 1
Quick 2 dodge 1
Int 2
Will 3
Char 2

To match the human Int and Char the troll only needs to spend 4 karma leaving 22 left over.
To match the troll Body and Str the human spends 9, leaving 20 left over.

I could have sworn I recalled the human getting a starting bonus over the troll in another category, which would have evened things out, but I was wrong. Ouch!

Edit: Math was off the first time around; this is now correct.

[Legolose]

Originally posted by jmck:

I disagree. I go for elf for the higher max quickness, with no real penalty. You lose out on 1 point of karma, total, (Cha 2 starting = 2 of the 3 extra karma humans get). Dwarves have a similar situation to elves, but with different attributes having higher maximums.

I tend to end the game with 10 or 11 effective quickness and ranged skills. I'm perfectly happy to give up 1 karma for a higher maximum to my most important combat attribute and skills.

^^ This right here100% agree..

http://s1185.photobucket.com/user/Legolose/media/Screenshot%201.png.html

[Hex]

It does'nt matter which race you pick, nothing in any of the SR games requires you to min-max to succeed.

[frdnwsm]

Originally posted by Hex:

It does'nt matter which race you pick, nothing in any of the SR games requires you to min-max to succeed.

Oh no, of course not. I finished Returns and Dragonfall with characters that were hardly maximized for their professions. But there are some folks who are interested in such things, either for actual game play or to satisfy intellectual curiosity. I was interested to see that the extra starting karma for humans didn't match abilities from racial traits for certain professions; I had thought that it would.

And I am interested in trying to min/max the character I am playing now to see how it goes. Physical adepts are a bit more challenging to run than some others. I have a non "perfect" physical adept doing Prosperity Tower right now; I had him pick up some skill in ranged weapons and pistols, of all things. I started a second run with a character that want to maximize, so as to compare the two mechanically. I'll get the second one to the same stage of development and see if there is any significant difference in how they perform.

[Hex]

physical adepts work well with any race. The last points only dwarfs can get are overkill and completely pointless since you'll have passively more armor and med cover at all times than any other character if you get the leopard totem wich gives +1 armour that with 8 from best armour and the passive from martial defense gives you passive 10, which is the cap, You're pretty much unkillable with 9will+qi casting.

Then put 3 into cyber affinity and get the magnetic arm without spellbook loss means you're immune to grenades as well. you can just curb stomp everything, are unflankable and always in cover and with 10 armour, you'll just block 90% of attacks against you, even magick attacks cause will reduces your chance to be hit by magick in addition to magic def which grants cover to it.

A phys adept can solo the game on the hardest difficulty wthout any problems whatsoever if built right. Just put your points into will, qi casting, str and close combat. Leftovers into 4 body (easily enough) 3 into cyber aff and 3 summoning to get the leopard totem.

[Amanojaku]

From math alone, yeah guess you can say that Human and Troll are best races. From Role Playing perspective and expanding story via own imagination, also from personal prefrences it may vary from person to person.