4
I went to the newbb2 site/devs and found my answer. 1 post = 50 karma. Thats it.
They are looking into having ways to gain/loose karma via voting totals, how many replies, if your post gets stickied/locked, etc. But none of that is implemented as of yet.
and there currently is no display for karma, prob be in the next major update when the karma system is fleshed out.