Worst character concepts?, General question. Options

[Fortune]

[Glyph]

In Third Edition:

The budding entepreneur (I spend all of my starting resources buying survival knives, then I sell the trauma patches out of them).

The parapalegic bunker rigger/mage who hides in a citymaster or basement lair and sends out drones/spirits to do all the work (SR4, too).

The SURGED catgirl (ex?) pornstar, replacing the lesbian night one stripper/assassin as "favorite female character to be played by male players". :love:



In Fourth Edition:

Mr. Lucky (but only if you use Cain's interpretation of the called shot rules that lets him take down a Citymaster with an Ares Viper).

Bloodzilla (a rules exploit involving summoning blood spirits, if the GM lets players play magical threats).

Agent Smith armies (although that loophole has been closed up, I think).

The possession tradition mage with chanelling and a super high-Force spirit (although it is only broken if you are very lenient on what counts as a service).

The pornomancer (Guilty!! :D ).

[Kyoto Kid]

[Snow_Fox]

[Kyoto Kid]

...and a good player can occasionally screw up too. After all we are only (Meta)Human. :grinbig:

[Critias]

[Wounded Ronin]

[Kyoto Kid]

[Mercer]

I think the cliche of the "good" roleplayer playing a weak character has a kernel of truth to it, in that, when you are making a character, you do sometimes make build decisions that aren't about character power; a few points will be set aside for fluff skills that round out the character. (This was more true of SR1&2, where there were no free knowledge skills, and every point had to come from somewhere.) You take that tendency to its logical though absurd conclusion, and if 2 points in fluff makes you a good roleplayer, then 40 points in fluff must make you grrrrrrrreat!

No idea why I went all Tony the Tiger there at the end.

[Kagetenshi]

Yeah, there is a certain degree to which effectiveness may need to be sacrificed to flavour. Arguably that's a flaw in the game, though, which requires you to make functional sacrifices for certain interesting concepts that are not inherently weak—that is, something like the aforementioned mage who uses Agony. It's not that someone going around causing people pain is an inherently weak character, it's a result of the uselessness of the Agony spell itself. There are other tradeoffs like that where it's actually worth it to take them.

~J

[ElFenrir]

Yeah, i mean, ive always been against weak character=better roleplayer, ive met people who played every weakling as a whiny #&%"&! and called it ''role-playing disadvantages''. Ive met people with very successful characters, who were skilled or with good attributes, or both, and had PLENTY of character.

But yeah, i can see where the kernel of truth is. In SR1 and 2, you could have 2 characters...anything, really, samurai, riggers, deckers...with all the same priorities. Character 1 could have all computer/techie skills with a pistols skill on the side for defense. Character two also has his computer/techie skills(say in the case of deckers), but also allocated some of his(rather limited at the time, if you had skills B, thats 30 points and you had to also get Computer Theory in those days and buy ettiquette skills seperate)skills to Musical Instrument: Keyboards, Street AND Musical Ettiquette, and a skill in Unarmed Combat(Capoeria), to show that he also played synth in bar bands and practiced said Capoeria for health and fun, even if he wasn't a front line-fighter.(yes, someone with a good martial arts skill doesn't necessarily have to seek out combat, suprising. :grinbig: )

It doesn't mean Decker A is a crappy character; he could be played with some great personality, but Decker B does stand out a bit, even if he had to sacrifice a few points from his Computer Theory, Electronics, and Computer B/R to do it.

[Fortune]

Choosing to give your character flavor and a few 'fluff' skills is not quite the same thing as building in semi-crippling flaws in solely so that you can prove you possess elite roleplaying skills, and then criticizing those that don't choose to do the same.

[Stahlseele]

that's like using a mac and saying that you are better with computers than most people *g*

[Kagetenshi]

[fistandantilus4....]

Had a player once that handed me a sheet with an albino gnome otaku 6 year old with all 1s on physical attributes. Handed it back. Told him he'd die on principle shorly before dying from everything else in the game. His Willpower was somewhere around 8 IIRC.

[Kagetenshi]

Is there any particular reason you objected to that build? It's the most logical route to go with Otaku, though the fact that his Willpower was only 8 does make it a candidate for a very, very poor character concept—a regular human Otaku can get to 8 (9 with albinism, 11 with edges) if they all-1 the physical stats.

~J

[Kyoto Kid]

...yeah had a 12 year old Otaku, pretty much the same, all 1s in the physical & 8s in the mental attributes. She actually survived several sessions (thanks to the sammy I was also running - small group we all played 2 characters each) and managed to attain her first submersion grade. First Echo: Biofeedback Filter (I believe that was the name, been too long since I looked at her sheet) It was the one that allows you to use Willpower instead of body against Black IC attacks.

[fistandantilus4....]

Kage: Becuase it was a gnome actually. I'd ask him to think more than twice about trying to play a 6 year old, because I let soeoen do it before (albeit an 11 yr old). Gnomes it specifically says tend towards being shamans, very back to nature. I asked him if he could justify or explain the conflict with them generally being very nature oriented, and his character being compeltely the opposite. He couldn't, and didn't even try. This was 3rd edt BTW if it makes any difference on stats.

Basically, the concept was flaky and he had put no thought into the character's background (or in this case justification is a better word IMO). I do stand by the belief that the albino otaku kid is just asking for a little coffin however unless they never ever leave the cave, which makes for a pretty weak character IMO.

[Kagetenshi]

That's the tradeoff you make for an Otaku, especially with the all-1s option—they're very powerful in the Matrix, but are forced to rely on others outside of it. It's a big part of what makes the character type interesting in the first place, and not just "decker that costs karma instead of nuyen".

As for justification, while I'm not going to argue that the player made an effective justification (since you say he pretty much didn't make one at all), all you need to justify an Otaku Gnome is "not all metahumans conform to the stereotypes of their metavariant."

~J

[bibliophile20]

[Kagetenshi]

Come to think of it, I think I've found the missing Shadowrun racism. I was sorta hoping for it to be in-character, but note how many metavariants are presented as monocultures with defined personality traits.

~J

[Tanka]

[Stahlseele]

[Kagetenshi]

Even with 15 dice (13 base Willpower plus the two-die bonus for doing it at chargen) you don't quite reach 25% odds (~23.15%, to be more precise).

As for starting with all-1s, that's one point allocated (actually two in the case of Trolls, who need to buy up Quickness above 0), not a final tally of one point.

~J

[Wounded Ronin]

I'd cackle with glee if someone handed me a character sheet with physical attributes of all 1s, especially if they had a pretentious RP thing going on. Without being hard on them at all as the GM I'd just wait for some random accident or thing to happen in the game which woud incidentally make that character die horribly due to an inability to scale down anything.

It's only slightly less entertaining than watching a 1st edition D&D theif try to squirm through 1st level with only 1 HP because he rolled poorly for hitpoints. "Oops, the module says that characters who fail their dex check will stub their toe here and take...1 point of damage. Guys, you all see Randolf the theif stub his toe...and then his head explodes and he dies. It seems like he was really unlucky and he stubbed his toe precisely on an ancient Chinese martial arts pressure point."