Quote Originally Posted by Reluctance View Post
To step in with one of my pet peeves. It's rare to find a runner without the expected 6/two 5s. Look up the level of expertise that implies. Bottom-feeder "runners" are all well and good if everybody agrees that street scum are fun. Fresh from chargens are more likely to be competent somebodies than not.

It'd be nice if people were clearer about what power levels they were aiming for (and what the rules allowed) instead of building from theory first.
You're mostly right, the build point system strongly encourages high powered characters, and it's fair to assume that's a design choice rather than an accident(regardless, they didn't change it with SR4A, so they're happy with it at least).

It's actually inefficient to start the game with a stat at natural max. Raising an attribute from 1 to 5 costs 40 BP, and 70 karma. Thats a 1.75 karma to BP ratio, averaged out, while raising an attribute from 5 to 6 costs 20 BP or 30 karma, which is a 1.5 karma to BP ratio. Thus it is more BP efficient to raise raise attributes up to 5, but not to 6(assuming human). In fact, it's just as efficient to change a 2 into a 3 as it is to change a 5 into a 6. Just avoid 6's at creation in the BP system, buy them with karma.

Skills are another matter, you should always have your one at 6 or your two at 5(the one at 6 gives you a better exchange rate), and put the rest of your important skills at 4.

Honestly, I prefer a heavily modified karma creation system.