Thank you for that transparently willful misapprehension of what I actually said.

Is that a gel pack in your vitals protector, or are you just happy to see me?

Only as much as you willfully misapprehended what I said about there not being as much people as capable of figuring out such an armor combination, even in the corps.

If the corps have people capable of and willing to do everything your runners are, then your games must suck as they consist of a bunch of runners sitting around waiting for calls that never happen because your world is chocked full of more qualified people.

Actually I wanted to say that even the corps do not have many people capable of and willing to do what your runners do, but it came out wrong.

If the Corps have the People, The Tools, the Will AND the Desire to take responsibility, then yes, the 'Runners will be bored out of their skull, as there would be no need for them at all...

However, in Shadowrun, the Corps do NOT want to take that responsibility (even if they can satisfy every other salient point otherwise)... they want plausible deniability, and you cannot get that using your own resources, which is why they hire out those particular jobs...

Keep the Faith

Not in my game. Most of the guns in the game does not come with smartguns. You don't need a smartgun for target shooting any more than you need a automatic shift for learning to drive a car. Not everyone wants smartlinks, and laser sights are still common.

For runners smartguns are mechanically so superior and thus almost given though.

You got it all backwards. Runners are used not because they are more qualified than corp strike teams, but because they are deniable assets - the corp's public image doesn't suffer if they fail and are caught.
If you think that a bunch of lesbian elf stripper ninjas, corp outcasts, and general losers can be better than a professionally trained spec ops team, you are gravely mistaken - and if you test it out in meatspace, "gravely" in literal meaning.
Besides, runners come cheaper than operators, if less reliable.

Fixed that.

Just how many charsheets have you seen in your time, toturi?
Runners are a bunch of cripples generally, from runaway backup clones to psychotics to paraplegics, not "ex-corp professionally trained spec ops".
The most likely places to meet your team would be Weird Allergy Support Groups. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Quite a few actually.

Runners that I have in my game tend to be ex-SEAL/ex-commando/ex-ranger/ex-Red Samurai/ex-Tir Ghost/ex-[insert some elite unit] that survived their unit being wiped out/suffered some catastrophe/a couple even were simply downsized because they were deemed more individualistic than others(the ex-Red Sams).

There was a time when nearly every other week there would be a new character sporting roughly the same ex-elite unit background posted on Dumpshock. And that's usually for the Sams/Adepts.

The mages... oh boy... I'd be lucky if the guy is just a graduate student from Charles University (whose thesis supervisor so happened to be Schwartzkopf). The Matrix guys? I got AIs in Bust-A-Moves or Matrix Adepts(meaning ex-elite unit again). Weird allergies don't picture in my games because they are restricted to allergies found within the books.

i pity you. doesn't that kinda get boring after a time?
also, what do you mean with allergy restricted to what's found in books?

Not really, no, if my players don't feel bored, neither do I. Afterall, there are a lot of elite units out there and there is enough variations to keep it interesting. Like an ex-Ghost hacker. Or a ex-SEAL rigger. Same-same but different.

Allergies are usually restricted to only the examples in the allergy table. Or if they can point to an official NPC with that allergy, they can have the same one.

So, no Allergy Dog-Hair or something like that? O.o

How about if they can point to it in a medical journal?

Is that medical journal an SR4 book?

I draw a line in the sand. That line says RAW. Within that RAW, I do not care if your character has 3 Allergies and 4 Incompetences as long as your background accounts for them.

How does one account for allergies?
You either have them, or you don't, right? o.O

Like you were once paid in gold and it was a pain in the ass. Or the aquarium (in a landlocked city) had to use real seawater for its exhibits and you had to steal a rare sea turtle from there.

Or you woke up pissed everyday, because the factories were just a mile away and you were allergic to the pollutants. Common allergies are pretty easy to account for actually.

So would you allow allergy common medium against dog hair and phobia common and light against dogs because of the allergy for example? O.o

There isn't "dog hair" under Allergies, do you have a canon SR4/SR4A example of a character with dog hair allergy? If not, no.

There are no "dog" phobia under Phobias either. So unless you can show me otherwise, no.

I see.

If it's true for your group, it's not universally true because of that. The books just provide too many possibilities for weirdness both within positive and negative qualities for most shadowrunner groups not to be called "troupes" more fittingly than "units". If you enforce your own policies, it's fine and your right as a GM, of course (while I'd for one wouldn't play in your group, since I find restrictions of that kind annoying) - just don't say it's normal when you have Netcat with a net cat in the books. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

I can honestly say that I have never made, nor seen, such a character in all my years of Shadowrun... though I have heard of their fabled existence... sort of like Bigfoot... you hear about him but never actually see any definite proof of his existence... Though I am not quite as restrictive as Toturi on what I would allow...

Keep the Faith

There isn't "drinking water" in the equipment list either, so I guess that doesn't exist in SR either then. Everyone has to drink SoyBeer/generic alcoholic drink.

The examples listed under Allergies on the SR4 book are... examples. They are not limitations of what kinds of allergies you can take with the quality. They require GM's permission of course, but so does all the qualities. Now why don't you just ban the whole Allergy quality if you think every original allergy has to be broken somehow?

RAW specifies the quality with the values Common or Uncommon, Mild/Moderate/Severe. That's it.