The Task at hand is optimization, and sadly (as you can see) some (maybe many) choose to optimize in the deep dark depths of rules lawyering (even when they know it is cheese monkey rules lawyering). It is sad, really.

Fortunately, many of the issues we see here (potentially ALL the issues) can be reconciled with Conversation before games commence to remove the ambiguity that the Rules Lawyers try to bring to the Table.

Sadly, Roleplayers try to bring ambiguity back to the table by pointing to "intent" and label other people who disagreed with them as cheese monkeys. Then turn around by saying that all such issues can be reconciled with "conversation" when what they really mean is to reconcile such issues their way and their interpretation.

Rules Lawyers remove ambiguity from the table. Rules and rules lawyers do not take sides. If the language of the rules is ambiguous, then Rule Lawyers will point it out; but if the phrasing is clear and unambiguous, then Rule Lawyers will say so as well. Rules Lawyers state facts and when multiple conclusions may be drawn, make clear distinction between the facts and their opinion, unlike Roleplayers.

To be honest, I see it as a bit of both. It's pretty obvious that the real cost of the negative merit can be summed up as "Vinny and Guido are here to collect". That said, they will be off your back for the most part once you pay them off. Of course, once they have done such a gracious favor for you as to give you an unsecured loan, you will be more than happy to return the favor within the limits of your skill set (hopefully) at a later date. It's only polite. This strong tendency for "favor swapping" is what is implied by the negative trait by my reading.

To be honest, I see it as a great character concept builder. Taking it "cause...y'know...money" is a great way to have a pissed off player when you put the screws to them later.

Yup! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

And at your table, I will be free to take NQ's that have absolutely no bite to them at all so as to insure maximum lethality and optimization. Just know at my table you will not be allowed to perform such shenanigans. *shrug*

While you may find such shenanigans fun and enjoyable, I find that they are tedious and tend to suck the life out of the game.
Also Notice - Not once did I say anything about Roleplaying trumping Optimization... That is your Hangup, not mine.

Here is what the Book says about the situation...



So, If you want to be a Strict Rules Lawyer, you MUST admit that if the GM says you cannot resolve the NQ, then you DON'T GET TO RESOLVE IT. EVER!
The GM does not have to allow you to pay off your Debt... All that extra Money you think you are paying to resolve that debt is just a bonus to the organization you owe money to. They will never let you off the hook, if that is what the GM wants.

no, for a couple of reasons:

1) they haven't removed the drawback. they're not suffering from it presently, and I personally as a GM wouldn't be particularly inclined to allow that NQ on a character with no compelling reason to ever raise their logic above 2, but the drawback (they can't raise their attribute beyond a certain point) is still present. if they were to try and justify that the penalty should be removed, *then* I would expect them to be willing to pay the karma to get rid of the quality.

2) I'm not advocating that rocks fall on a person who tries to pay off their debt without getting rid of the quality. I'm advocating that if they get rid of the quality, they have to pay the cost of getting rid of the quality.

if you take a negative quality and your plan from the get-go is to get rid of it, expect to pay the karma to get rid of it. if you're not willing to pay the karma to get rid of the quality, then don't expect the quality to go away.

I apply this to any negative quality. alternately, I would also be willing to offer a player the chance to pick up other negative qualities in place of their current ones, after they've done the required roleplaying. so, for example, you might be able pay off your debt, and then discover that the person hates you and the only reason they weren't actively trying to hurt or kill you is that it would mean they wouldn't get their money back... so now you've paid off the cash portion of the debt, you've got an enemy. or, perhaps you got rid of your debt by taking a day job. and so on. I would allow that in place of paying the appropriate karma amount, if the player wants.

but honestly, if I'm going to let someone just pay the quality off without paying karma, then I may as well just give some free BP to people that aren't harmed by a given quality, and not bother tracking the quality in the first place.

anyways, as far as qualities, one thing I've generally found is that negative qualities get worse at a much faster rate than their points value would suggest. generally speaking, a 30 point NQ is not nearly as forgiving as a pair of 15 point NQs, which in turn are not as forgiving as three 5 point NQs. just about anything above 15 points is likely to be extremely unpleasant. at 20 points, you're probably looking at a crippling flaw that will make your character incapable of accomplishing basic tasks unless they spend more BP than the NQ grants just to function below the most basic level of the task the NQ penalizes. the only exceptions are qualities that scale their costs, and even then it's pretty dubious... but at least maxed out gremlins isn't remotely as bad as taking, say, uneducated, even though it can be very nasty (for example, with gremlins 5, you're looking at a dice pool of 13 before you can roll a single 1 and not glitch... but if you roll the statistically likely number, you'll still glitch every time you use tech with 13 dice). from a min/max perspective, look for multiple small negative qualities to fill out your quota. there are exceptions, though (and whatever you do, don't be an aspected magician; if you want to be an aspected summoner, just take incompetence in all three spellcasting skills).

also, the flip side is generally also true; the most valuable positive qualities, point-for-point, are the low value ones. high value qualities are seldom worth the BP you pay to get them. for the most part, 10 points is about the cutoff in terms of where it's a good choice, with the exception of exceptional attribute. even then, most positive qualities are pretty lousy in general; from an optimization perspective, take as many low-value negative qualities as you can, and only take positive qualities at all if you expect to use them a lot, and even then consider carefully whether it's worth the cost.

If I had a player with a negative quality that wanted to be rid of it (Enemy, Debt, etc.) and they wanted to get rid of it I'd probably give them (and the party) the chance to run an adventure to do just that. Doesn't make much sense for say, Allergies, but you could easily have the players go put the boots to the guy you owe a debt to or setting out to kill the Enemy or Organization once and for all, and the player with the negative quality doesn't earn Karma for that adventure which is where the payoff comes from.

Good advice, Jaid. Also, for negative qualities, it is usually better not to get a negative quality that will never come into play - that only draws GM ire. Instead, get negative qualities that rarely come up, or are mildly inconvenient (moderate allergy to silver, scorched, weak immune system, etc.). That, or lateral limiters for things that you won't max out or use at all anyways (impaired Attribute for a Logic of 2, sensitive system for an awakened character, etc.). Just be sure the GM is okay with lateral limiters, or it could annoy the GM the same way the it-will-never-come-up flaws do.


Another thing about optimization: look at opportunity costs, not just flat costs. Things that are cheaper to get with karma can still be worth it, to start out with a strong character. Specializations are one thing. Sure, you can get them cheaper with karma, but you can say that for anything up to a skill of 2 with a specialization, and even a skill of 3 is not that different. Specializations at character creation are something I would recommend for two things: first, to get two extra dice for you primary specialty, and secondly, to get a cheap bonus to a peripheral but important skill. An example of the second: getting pilot ground vehicle: 1 with a specialization in wheeled for your high-Reaction street samurai. Six build points give you four more dice than you would have from defaulting.

Some things in the game are exorbitantly expensive. Starting out with a skill of 7, for example, costs 10 points for the quality and 14 points to raise the skill from 6 to 7. One point of improvement is hardly worth 24 build points! Even if you are playing the best gunman in the world, usually those points would be better spent raising Body or Reaction (I am assuming Agility would already be at least soft-maxed), or skills supporting your main specialty such as running, dodging, infiltration, or perception.

speaking of specializations... not all specializations are exactly equal.

for example, every single pilot skill has a "remote operation" specialization. the general consensus is that this specialization is used when you operate a vehicle via a command program. for a rigger type that almost exclusively plans on using drones with the control device matrix action (which uses the command program), specializing in remote operation is basically the same as getting +2 to your skill for everything.

other good choices include the aforementioned wheeled specialization for groundcraft (for most characters), gunnery (ballistic), pistols (semiautomatics). there is also the contested software(threading) specialization, which is not one in the standard lists but could arguably be, dodge(vehicle or ranged), infiltration (vehicle or urban), computer (matrix perception), and so on;

basically, there are a lot of specializations that essentially boil down to being a +2 bonus almost every time you roll. there are also a lot of specializations that are not quite so good, and which can easily wait until later (or never).

I did not accuse you of saying Roleplaying trumping Optimization either. I was simply correcting your incorrect and inaccurate view of Rules Lawyers and Roleplayers. If correcting someone who I think is wrong is a hangup, then so be it.

By a strict reading of the RAW, I agree that if the GM says you cannot remove the Negative Quality, then you don't get to remove it with karma. It is true that the GM does not have to allow you to pay off your Debt with karma. It says nothing about paying off the In Debt quality via the mechanisms stated within the specifics of In Debt.

Also no one ever said in debt was a well designed quality.

"If the gamemaster approves, a character can work off a negative quality by undertaking severe changes as appropriate to the quality."

*if* the gamemaster approves, you can work off a negative quality. the procedure for doing this is then indicated, and culminates in the GM giving you permission to buy off the negative quality with karma once you've undertook the appropriate changes. it begins with the GM allowing you to try and do the work to get rid of the negative quality at all.

per RAW, you can't even attempt to pay off your debt until the GM approves, at which point you can start making those changes, and when the changes have been made, only then may you get rid of the quality by paying the cost in karma. not by just roleplaying the quality into nonexistence, either. there is no provision made for working off a negative quality outside of this procedure, though obviously individual GMs can do whatever they want in their own games.

you want to pay off your debt? you get GM approval first, and when you've made those changes (ie paid off the nuyen cost), you are then able to get rid of the quality if you spend the karma to do so.

the severe changes (ie paying off however many thousands of nuyen you are in debt for) are certainly much more straightforward, especially for characters that are not reliant on nuyen for character improvement, than the severe changes required for other negative qualities. but they still only constitute the first part of getting rid of the quality, just like the rules for getting rid of an addiction don't allow you to lose the addiction negative quality separate from paying the karma to get rid of your addiction negative quality.

^^^ this. I would add that it is very poorly written for several reasons. It's not described well enough, you don't get enough money for it, and it doesn't go the heart of the situation as it stands in the way that the underworld actually uses loan sharking. Loan Sharking and Gambling Debt is the most basic level of how criminal organizations get their meat hooks into non-criminal types. You get their ass in the hole and the loan sharks/gambling house "forgive" a part of the debt if the victim give them an "in" of some sort. They "forget" about your debt while they work with you, you think you're cool, and then they basically puts the screws to your ass to where you get to choose between going far enough to potentially get tossed in prison or getting dead because they've been remembering the compounded interest you've been thinking was getting taken care of...oops?

5 points means you will very likely eventually get out and they'll send some leg breakers if you fuck around. 10 points means that they'll be pretty damn serious about the whole thing and you're probably screwed unless you are a real mover and shaker. 15+ points means it's pretty much your ass. Some idiot player goes for the gusto with me at 30 points and their character is fucked. The sharks have some serious leverage on the character and the character has the cold hard knowledge that the sharks have the character's balls in a vise and the sharks hold the crank. They call, you haul. No questions...EVER.

No, he cannot pay off the debt until the GM approves if he is using that rule to buy the NQ off.

But if he is not going to buy the NQ off, In Debt makes the provision of reducing the amount of money owed, as long as he does not buy the NQ off.

I can see how someone can conflate both the general rule of working off an NQ and the specifics of paying off the capital owed from In-Debt.

Per RAW, I see 3 options to characters with In-Debt

1) They pay off the capital owed, but they still have the NQ on their character sheet albeit with a capital owed of 0. (using the RAW from In-Debt, and since they are not buying the NQ off the quoted rule from above does not apply)

2i) They pay off In-Debt with karma. As per RAW, how the GM chooses to allow the character to work off his Debt is up to him, it does not have to be with cash.

2ii) They pay off In-Debt with karma and cash.

It is generally option #1 that most people would take exception to, partly because if it is allowed, it breaks down the entire mechanism for buying off flaws. If a flaw is reduced to nothing but a notation on your sheet, then why would any player bother getting the GM's permission to buy off the flaw, and spending Karma to be rid of it? Similarly, the character could simply stop showing up at his Day Job, or shoot his Dependent in the head, and so on.

Most GMs would either have consequences occur (like psychophipps said, maybe the money is paid off, but you still owe "favors" to the nice underworld types who gave you that loan), replace the flaw with one of equal value (technically RAW, since by RAW GMs can give players negative qualities whenever the hell they feel like it), or simply deduct the cost of removing the flaw prior to giving out Karma, until it is paid off.


To bring it back to optimization: shenanigans like this are usually a bad idea. Any transitory advantage you might gain will usually be offset by the wrath of the offended GM. Metagaming has its place, especially during character creation (avoiding trap options or poor choices such as the adrenal pump), but trying to get around the rules will rarely end well for any of the parties involved.

Generally, if a player did not want to pay off the karma for the negative quality, and the quality is having no mechanical effect any longer, I would have the NQ change to a different one of the same value. I might even let the player have input on what the new NQ will be.

NQs should always have some negative effect unless paid off in karma.

Many loan sharks can come up with all sorts of reasons why a particular loan isn't REALLY paid off, in any case. A paid off loan represents a loss of income, after all.


-k

Well I tried to end it... So how 'bout that rain forest carbine?

that's funny, I don't remember the quality saying "by the way, this completely bypasses the usual rules for getting rid of a negative quality" anywhere in the description.

the quality tells you what the "severe change" you need to make is. that is the only difference between it and, say, gremlins.

One funny thing I noticed, moving from untrained to having one rank in a skill actually gives you +2 dice. An untrained check just uses your stat and penalizes your dice pool, while having one rank erases the penalty and gives you a die for a rank. Moving from -1 to +1 is a difference of two dice.

To be honest, I'm several magnitudes more excited about an interesting character than I am about an optimized character. I'm at the gaming table to tell a collective story with my friends, not to "win". Optimization ( ie finding little loopholes in the system to become more "powerful') is often found in characters with a "win" focus and this, in my own overbearing, opinionated wanker ™ experience, most often leads to rather uninteresting characters or players that turn into whiny bitches when the negative traits they have taken turn out to be real negatives rather than just another stepping stone for more kicking proverbial ass in the character's chosen gimmick.

Not entirely.

As I pointed out in the original post, anything can be optimized. A great character concept executed poorly isn't going to be any fun.

Let me use a system I'm more familiar in for an example,

You could take a weaker class and weaker concept like a Ranger dual wielding a quarterstaff, which in an ordinary game would mostly result in getting your arse kicked, and then find the best way to execute the concept so you're not a drain on the party and can fulfill your role.


Optimization: Taking a concept and executing it in the strongest way possible.

Min/Maxing is more or less the same thing, though often with more emphasis on overall strength in a system than a given concept but again anything can be min/maxed.

Munchkin: A trollish gamer who aims to "win" at all costs and often takes perverse joy in ruining the fun of others. He is not above cheating to achieve his goals.

Optimizers and Min/Maxers enjoy making strong characters or simply don't want to play an underpowered character (I don't like playing an underpowered character because I don't want to be a drain on the party) but we don't by default want to ruin the fun of other players, wreck games, or lie and cheat. Munchkins can be Min/Maxers and Optimizers but most Min/Maxers and Optimizers are not Munchkins.

Example, in my Magical Girl Game, the Big Eyes Small Mouth 2e system is so easy to break you can do it by accident. Wendy and I are very careful to pick effective choices for our characters but only things in character. We work with the GM to make sure everything makes sense for our characters and the setting and won't break the game. I'm trying to make the best character I can within the narrow restrictions I have set for myself even before the group more or less agreed to do that.


Munchkins really tarnish the image of optimizers in general. We don't want to sit at the table bored at best or at worst dragging all the other players down with us as they have to spend resources bailing our lame arses out. For me, I have a deep seated need to do things "the right way", I can balm it by at least avoiding the more obvious traps in a game system, if I can do that then I don't need to go crazy making something game breaking because I know my character will at least be competent.

We like digging into the nuts and bolts of the rules. That's half the fun for us. That doesn't mean we don't want to roleplay or making interesting characters or what have you.

I think this is good as it shows what a difference some actual training can make over just raw talent (high attribute defaulting). It also encourages you to get 1 rank in a skill you may otherwise just default on since it gives not 1 but 2 dice.

That's a good point. I've been putting together a character a I've been learning the system. I've grabbed a number of skills at one rank because it makes sense for him to have been trained (even if he's let those skills lapse) or because they'd be likely to come up with ome regularity and having the extra two dice might be important.

Optimization really isn't "finding little loopholes in the system". A lot of us have been advocating against rules-wankery in this thread. To me, getting a ranged skill at 6, a specialization, a smartlink, and a reflex recorder is simply making logical choices for someone who is a sharpshooter by trade. Stuff like trying to argue that a skill of 7 with the aptitude quality still means you can take two skills at 5, because the rules only say one at 6 or two at 5, and don't mention 7's; or trying to stack two sets of FFBA; or trying to get gel packs on each piece of PPP - that is trying to exploit (or make) loopholes, and is not optimization, but poor gaming.

This is another place where I disconnect from many SR players. I see dicepools of 10+ without gear (talking about 4th Ed scales here) as suddenly changing to the question to "What in the hell is your character doing Shadowrunning?" We're getting into some serious regional/world class skillsets here. These guys would be very well paid to train other people or be on retainers as troubleshooters for major corporations or governmental agencies. For weapons skills, we're talking Tier 1 Spec-Ops and professional shooting competitors (with the 1,000+ rounds a week to maintain their skills). For athletics we're at professional athletes. Drivers are professional drivers on the NASCAR circuit at this phase as well. Professional skills are regional experts, top-notch practioners that consult for ridiculous fees.

Where does risking your ass daily for peanuts doing illegal activities come into the equation when you can do it legitimately for more money and less risk?