The worst flaw in the world, And the winner is... Options

[tsuyoshikentsu]

Look, Uneducated is a much more optimized flaw, if we're doing it that way. (This is neither the time nor the place for my explanation of how "munchkin" is being incorrectly applied, and how you're not being in character if you don't optimize.) If you want 35 BP out of a 20-BP flaw, though?

Uncouth
Incompetent: Con
Incompetent: Negotiation
Incompetent: Ettiquette

[knasser]

Look, Uneducated is a much more optimized flaw, if we're doing it that way. (This is neither the time nor the place for my explanation of how "munchkin" is being incorrectly applied, and how you're not being in character if you don't optimize.) If you want 35 BP out of a 20-BP flaw, though?

Uncouth
Incompetent: Con
Incompetent: Negotiation
Incompetent: Ettiquette

Heh! Cain and Draco18's selections were better. I get what you're doing above with the doubling up of similar negative qualities, but Uncouth alone would likely get you killed in my game as would Incompetent: Etiquette. Con and Negotiation might not necessarily get you killed right off, but you wouldn't be very popular with your team mates. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[tsuyoshikentsu]

Why? If all you do is stand still and stay silent, where's the chance to screw up?

[Cain]

Uncouth is a bad buy. It locks you out of six skills, but only pays you the equivlaent of four. You're better off buying the entire group as Incompetences and gain 30 points, than buy Uncouth (which does the same thing) for only 20.

[shuya]

Why? If all you do is stand still and stay silent, where's the chance to screw up?

a character with uncouth and incompetent: etiquette CAN'T stand still and stay silent. they'd be so socially retarded that they wouldn't be able to avoid fucking things up, even if they thought they were standing around being unobtrusive. so when your uncouth, incompetent, charisma dump-stat troll walks into a store, the clerk calls the incredibly racist cops to throw you in jail just because you're there, and good luck trying to convince them that you weren't doing anything wrong, because you probably barely know how to communicate with another human being.

and to be more specific, the ACTUAL chance to screw up can be found in this beautiful sentence: "The gamemaster may require the character to make Success Tests for social situations that normal people would have no problems with."

[Draco18s]

You can't take those as a mundane, I'm almost certain.

Here's a better list:

Incompetent Forgery
Incompetent Heavy Weapons
Incompetent Locksmith
Incompetent Parachuting
Incompetent Instruction
Incompetent Artisan
Incompetent Armorer
Incompetent Cybercombat

[Kingboy]

You can, according to RAW, take the sort of things Cain mentions, but any GM who doesn't take advantage of the (also RAW) phrase "Gamemasters are free to reject any choices that would prove irrelevant or exploitative in actual play" deserves what they get...

[Apathy]

I always started with the assumption that you had no business taking 'Incompetant' in any skill that either isn't a common shadowrunner skill (Athletics, Firearms, Unarmed Combat, Pilot Ground Craft, Etiquette, etc), or that they already have at least one point in the skill. Is this too harsh?

[Draco18s]

I always started with the assumption that you had no business taking 'Incompetant' in any skill that either isn't a common shadowrunner skill (Athletics, Firearms, Unarmed Combat, Pilot Ground Craft, Etiquette, etc), or that they already have at least one point in the skill. Is this too harsh?

Not at all.

And you can't have skill ranks in a skill in which you are incompetent.

[Falconer]

I don't see why anyones even going into incompetent in a worst flaw category

The book actually comes out and says...

"Gamemasters are
free to reject any choices that would prove irrelevant or exploitative in
actual play (ie. such as Incompetent: Pilot Aerospace in a campaign
where characters are street-level gangers)."

So practically every example given would be well within GM's purview to dock the guy his BP's and tell him lose the points or find another negative quality.

So how about a rephrase... what's the worst qualities which the GM doesn't have 'wide discretion' to reject.

[Red-ROM]

how about Sensitive System? does every mage have this? 15BP for the guy who never plans to get cyberware. and as a gm what do you do? kidnap them and implant a cranial bomb at double essence loss? he or she will never speak to you again.

and this one bugs me more than it should

mild addicton Betel gum 5BP

[tsuyoshikentsu]

Also Day Job.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Also Day Job.

What About it? Why is it the Worst?

[The Jake]

I don't see why anyones even going into incompetent in a worst flaw category

The book actually comes out and says...

"Gamemasters are
free to reject any choices that would prove irrelevant or exploitative in
actual play (ie. such as Incompetent: Pilot Aerospace in a campaign
where characters are street-level gangers)."

So practically every example given would be well within GM's purview to dock the guy his BP's and tell him lose the points or find another negative quality.

So how about a rephrase... what's the worst qualities which the GM doesn't have 'wide discretion' to reject.

Amnesia!

This is the point. It's a lot easier for a GM to reject a flaw like Incompetent: Compiling because it is bleedingly obvious what the player is trying to do. Amnesia is not so obvious and a lot harder to logically argue the grounds against it.

A player who wants to just tear up Seattle with spells or automatic weapons doesn't care how they get their BP, so long as they get it and they max key abilities right out. Amnesia keeps their character safe as it relies on a) the GM finding time to develop a past for them (since the player doesn't need to) and b) the GM calling it into focus for it to become an issue ingame. You'd be suprised how many GMs forget PC flaws (clearly I'm not one of them).

I tell you - Amnesia it is the munchkin flaw of champions.

- J.

[Falconer]

And I'm telling you as a 'survivalist' of the type described above. (I take offense at the term munchkin, some of just expect the opposition to actually be competent and use the same tricks we use against us)

I'd never touch amnesia. The drawbacks are too severe. It's too much of a rabbit for the GM to pull out of a hat and screw you with.

[Zurai]

Amnesia!

This is the point. It's a lot easier for a GM to reject a flaw like Incompetent: Compiling because it is bleedingly obvious what the player is trying to do. Amnesia is not so obvious and a lot harder to logically argue the grounds against it.

A player who wants to just tear up Seattle with spells or automatic weapons doesn't care how they get their BP, so long as they get it and they max key abilities right out. Amnesia keeps their character safe as it relies on a) the GM finding time to develop a past for them (since the player doesn't need to) and b) the GM calling it into focus for it to become an issue ingame. You'd be suprised how many GMs forget PC flaws (clearly I'm not one of them).

I tell you - Amnesia it is the munchkin flaw of champions.

- J.

As I've already point out, this is not true, except for the 25 BP Amnesia (and only the cheekiest players are going to take that particular negative quality). NOTHING AT ALL in the description of the 10 BP Amnesia quality states that the player is absolved of coming up with a background for the character. If you let them get away with that, it's your problem, not the quality's.

[HappyDaze]

As a GM, I tend to reject Incompetent almost 100% of the time. Sensitive System bugs me too as it's worth FAR to many points considering that those that take it generally have no intention of ever taking cyberware. I don't have a problem with Day Job - it's actually a fun way to pull characters into non-paying adventures (and that's why it becomes a negative).

[tsuyoshikentsu]

*Shrug* Depends on how you look at it, but I see your point.

Amnesia!

This is the point. It's a lot easier for a GM to reject a flaw like Incompetent: Compiling because it is bleedingly obvious what the player is trying to do. Amnesia is not so obvious and a lot harder to logically argue the grounds against it.

A player who wants to just tear up Seattle with spells or automatic weapons doesn't care how they get their BP, so long as they get it and they max key abilities right out. Amnesia keeps their character safe as it relies on a) the GM finding time to develop a past for them (since the player doesn't need to) and b) the GM calling it into focus for it to become an issue ingame. You'd be suprised how many GMs forget PC flaws (clearly I'm not one of them).

I tell you - Amnesia it is the munchkin flaw of champions.

- J.

I'm curious -- what do you have against players trying to roleplay by building the best character they can?

[Cain]

Oh, gods, how I loathe Day Job.

Not only is it a flaw that gives you money, the only real way of penalizing a character for having it is to punish the player, by making them sit out of important and fun sections of the game.

I've completely banned it in every SR game since it came out, I believe in SR2. Banned it, as in: "I will walk out rather than deal with this flaw". It's never come to that, of course-- I've always negotiated out something else that the player wanted instead.

Anyway, with Incompetences, the other thing to watch out for is Incompetences in skills you can't default to. Since you can't default to them anyway, it's effectively free points. Incompetent: Pilot Aerospace is a good example, but so is Incompetent Hardware and Software. Much harder to catch, the last two.

[Critias]

Rather than making someone sit out actual game time (as a negative side of Day Job), why not just give them a little extra hassle concerning healing between jobs, training times, surgery availability, shopping between jobs, etc, etc?

It can still be quite an inconvenience, without directly going to "Sorry Jack, you've got Day Job, you might as well not come over for tonight's session."

[Cain]

Because even then, they're making money by not Shadowrunning. I can live with things like Trust Fund, since you pay for the privledge; also, In Debt is barely tolerable since there is a penalty involved. But you not only get extra BP for taking Day Job, but you get money, and the worst you can do to them is hassle them a bit during downtime.

Moreover, smart munchkins will define their Day Job as something they can put away if needed. That turns the flaw into free points: by RAW, even if they didn't work their day job for a month, they still get the full value. Also, some things (like shopping) don't take a full day to do. They can still pull off a lot of downtime activities while working their Day Job.

[Critias]

I'm not saying it's a great Flaw -- I'm saying there are ways to mitigate it besides "No you can't take it" or "You miss this shadowrun, sorry you were busy delivering pizzas."

[Kingboy]

You know if I don't show up for my job for a month, it's no longer my job. It's now someone else's job, as I have been fired and replaced. Similarly, if I am independantly employed, and decide not to work for a month, I would expect to have some rather angry clients wondering where finished work was, new clients who have since gone to another purveyor, and a stack of bills from operating expenses that detract from the lack of money brought in that month.

Point being, in a sane campaign, a character who ignored their Day Job for a month no longer has the quality, and instead has a nice [BP*2] hole in their "karma account", to be paid off before they buy anything else. The GM who lets the character get away with something so loosely defined as to avoid such a fate, once again, deserves what they get. At a bare minimum, there's no way a character who avoids doing the work of their day job for a month should expect to receive any money from the quality for that period...

[Draco18s]

But you not only get extra BP for taking Day Job, but you get money, and the worst you can do to them is hassle them a bit during downtime.

The amount of money you get for a day job is a pittance. My last character had the 10hr/week level of the flaw, which covered maybe a third of my lifestyle (middling plus some debt).

10 hours a week is basically either one long day or two short days you can't participate, and I chose Friday as my day I couldn't do anything (what with being one of the bouncers at a bar Friday) and for the most part runs were planned around that.

Then we flew to Miami.

[ElFenrir]

Yeah, we've worked well with Day Job. Don't forget it also kind of makes you 'known.' It's not the easiest flaw to work with, and I can understand why people might not like it, but there are far worst ones to abuse.

First off, if a player takes it, we discuss what the job is and when they work it. If it's literally ''all during the day'', their biggest problems end up being a possible slight loss of secrecy(perhaps folks who have seen him on a tape if he's not careful, and THEN working at the hardware store the next day might have a double-take...), and of course, the problem with having to sleep. If they are up 24 hours due to work and a run, I will give a light penalty unless they stim-up(and eventually they will give in.) If the run is Wed night and they can't call out of work(oh, I'll allow a couple callouts, just like real life, but too many and they lose the job, and then we have to deal with a method of them paying those BP back via Karma(buying it off), OR them getting another job, so it's not free.) Also, should a meet take place during the day for some reason(hey, they can), this can come up.

A Night 'dayjob', of course, can get in the way of a run itself, and is much more severe-even though it tends to be a bit lighter on the secrecy problem, or needing to sleep.

A shift-work job will likely have the best(and worst) of both worlds. It may have a more adjustable schedule, but they also get seen during the day, or night, and so on. And of course, the schedule can't ALWAYS be adjusted.

I just don't see how this flaw is free BP at all. It's biggest flaw, IMO, is that it does take a bit more work on parts of both the GM and player.

As for Sensitive System, while we don't have a problem with it(cyberware nowadays is almost too good to pass up, even on a mage), I suggest splitting it up like it was, and awarding different points.

Sensitive System is 10/5 BP(for mundane/magical-technomancers). It acts like the Sensitive System in RAW. Bioware is still allowed, etc, but cyber comes at a price.

Bio-Rejection is 20/15 for mundane/magical-technomancer. It basically causes the person to ONLY be able to accept either cultured bioware, delta-grade implants, or self-cloned replacements. Anything else is violently rejected. This one SHOULD be worth a lot of points, again, given how good cyberware and bioware are.

For those folks who have the problem with the RAW Sensitive System, this may help a bit.