Metahumans Are Crazy? Options

[Zen Shooter01]

So, being metahuman costs BP. Which means that players of metahuman characters are more likely to take negative qualities to make up those BP - which means that metahuman characters are more likely to have mental health and substance abuse issues than human characters. This is really bad news for vampires and shapeshifters - the higher your BP cost for race, the more likely you'll have mental health problems.

So would metahumans and other non-humans have a reputation in the 6th World for being crazy?

[Achsin]

For the most part they also have higher minimum attributes to make up for the cost, as well as other abilities. I feel no more pressured to take negative qualities with a non/meta-human than with a regular human.

Also, not all negative qualities are mental health related; SINner, Sensitive System, Bad Luck, Astral Beacon, Pacifist and Day Job for instance have nothing to do with mental health, and there are many more negative qualities that aren't as well.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Given how sparse the build points are for any build, you can pretty much see the allowed 35 points worth of negative qualities maxed out anyway.

[Whipstitch]

So, being metahuman costs BP. Which means that players of metahuman characters are more likely to take negative qualities to make up those BP

Nope. As Achsin said, orks and trolls in particular are more cost effective than humans in many ways. The cost of being an ork can be easily made up by simply not taking the full 200 bps worth of attributes and you can still end up having more total attribute points than a human, which is excellent for generalist characters like Covert Ops guys or Combat Hackers. The drawback, of course, is that you don't have the same flexibility in assigning where these points go, but that's not really so bad since players rarely regret having a decent Body score and Strength has its uses in a fair number of builds.

And that's before you get into stuff like pairing orks and trolls with Weak Immune System, a 5 point flaw that only gives you a -2 penalty to disease resistance. Some diseases and bioweapons are real nasty, of course, but even on a "frail" Body 5 troll all you're really doing is knocking yourself back down to about the human average on one type of test. You'll still pack on armor and reap the benefits of extra condition boxes just fine.

[Yerameyahu]

Plenty of non-mental Negative Qualities.

[Whipstitch]

Really, the only thing I could see lending credence to the argument is that orks and trolls have penalties to Charisma, so in theory, a maxed out troll or ork won't throw around as many dice as a human or elf on a Willpower+Charisma to resist the compulsive behavior checks imposed by some Negative Qualities and mentors. But then again, in practice, trolls and orks end up with more attribute points to throw around at character creation than the other metatypes do, so I've often found that they're less likely to leave Will at 3 or even use it as an outright dump stat than a human is. Plus, you could also flip this argument on its head: Apparently Elves and Dwarves are better at resisting such impulses than humans.

[Mäx]

So would metahumans and other non-humans have a reputation in the 6th World for being crazy?

Considering that negative qualites include thinks like Sinner and Day job, you could just as well say that metahumans have a reputions for being normal workers.

[EKBT81]

So, being metahuman costs BP. Which means that players of metahuman characters are more likely to take negative qualities to make up those BP - which means that metahuman characters are more likely to have mental health and substance abuse issues than human characters. This is really bad news for vampires and shapeshifters - the higher your BP cost for race, the more likely you'll have mental health problems.

So would metahumans and other non-humans have a reputation in the 6th World for being crazy?

I don't think you can infer that much about the average 6th world inhabitant from the character creation rules. Those are meant to provide a passable balance between starting PCs, not to reflect the capabilities of the average 6th world inhabitant. Not everyone in the 6th world is "built" with 400 BP. And PCs aren't meant to be your average "Joe Ork" or "Joe Elf" anyway.

[Critias]

How many Human characters are out there that don't take all their available disadvantages, anyways? Especially amongst PCs?

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, if anything, I'm actually more tempted to hit the Negative Quality cap with humans, since they have relatively poor standard attributes and are often best utilized by putting an increased emphasis on gear, Edge, Resonance or Magic. Taking the hit to standard attributes isn't such a bad deal if you're getting a powerful Magician, Technomancer or a boatload of top-of-the-line gear out of the deal, but all three of those routes can turn into BP sinks rather quickly, particularly if you gun for Born Rich and/or Restricted Gear.

[Xahn Borealis]

Seeing as Negative Qualities are more likely to exist in PCs, one could say shadowrunners are more likely to have mental health and substance abuse issues, which sounds about right to me.

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, 400 bp characters simply aren't going to be representative of the general population, since most people would rather casually pursue their interests rather than devote themselves to constant self-improvement. If you're an attractive elf who's content raking in good tips at a restaurant, are you going to work on maxing out your ability to influence people or are you going to watch the trid when you get home? You're going to end up with a lot of people who cheerfully work their way up to a rut and stay there.