[X] My Assistant

[guy-jin]

Some potential allergies I'm thinking about. Please tell me if you think these are common or uncommon, and any other thoughts you have about them.

Cigarette smoke (i suspect uncommon, since it's a subset of pollution, which is common)
Nutrisoy (common, i think)
Gunpowder (this could be bad, since some gets on you ever time you fire a gun, but I would guess common, for a 'runner anyway)
Meat (uncommon? this would be funny for an orc, IMHO)
Yeast (uncommon - but you have to avoid both bread and dirty girls :P )

[Glyph]

Some GMs frown on food allergies - they think the negative quality should only be used for things your character could come into contact with whether he wants it or not, such as pollution, seawater, etc.

Personally, I would possibly allow it for things that would inconvenience the character. A nutrisoy allergy would mean that the character would have to spend more on food, and would have to go hungry in certain areas where the "good stuff" is unavailable. Such an allergy would probably be Common, and would be about as inconvenient as an allergy to pollution or seawater.

Meat, on the other hand, is not that hard to avoid. Plus, an ork allergic to meat is kind of weird - that's like a grizzly bear allergic to meat. It might be possible as an uncommon allergy if not eating meat would cause the character to lose respect among other orks, or some other in-game consequence beyond merely having to avoid something that is not commonly encountered and is easy to avoid. A better possibility would be an allergy to, say, MSG, which is used in a lot of things and is difficult to detect.

Yeast, like meat, is not that hard to avoid. Unless the characters have running gunfights through bakeries on a regular basis, it's a bit of a stretch.

Gunpowder would be common for a runner, and might be too debilitating - it literally gives you a penalty at the worst possible time.

Cigarette smoke would probably be a common allergy in Seattle now (unfortunately), much less in the gritty noirish dark future of Shadowrun.

[guy-jin]

OK, here we go: Torg 2.0. (that's his 'street' name, BTW: he has a rather geekier real name.) I'm just posting the crunchiest bits; I'm going to buy some contacts and gear, but this is the key stuff.

Body 5
Agil 5
Reac 5
Strn 5
Char 2
Logc 3
Intu 5
Will 3
(Magic 6, Edge 4, initiative 10)

Active Skills:
unarmed combat 4 (+2 martial arts)
Assensing 4 (+2 metahumans)
perception 3 (listening +2)
pistols 2 (SA +2)
Astral combat 2
data search 1
etiquette 1
stealth group 1

Negative qualities: Moderate allergy, seawater; SINner. (and I plan on buying a fake)

Adept powers:
Astral perception
Improved reflexes L2
Combat sense 1
improved senses(vision magnification, scent)
killing hands
mystic armor 1

[ShadowDragon]

Torg 2.0 looks fine. Not very optimized, but playable and good enough to contribute to a team if you play him smart. He definitely has room to grow with more karma, and 3 IPs, 4 edge, and 5 body will probably let him live long enough. I'd spend your karma on better skills before sinking them into expensive magic increases.

[lorechaser]

The only change I'd make is to drop magic to 5, find 7 BP somewhere, and pick up Synaptic Boosters 2 for 32 bp. That puts you magic to 4, but you still come out a point ahead for adept powers.

[TheOOB]

Some food alergies work a bit better as you can acidently be exposed to them. For example a soy or peanut allergy is hard to avoid because they can be found anywhere. I also had a character with a garlic allergy once, and just the strong smell from being around it was enough to trigger it. Made a few people think he was a vampire (he was a black mage, so not too far off).