what to do?, how screwed should this player be? Options

[FuelDrop]

Ok, here's the low down.
Player has an elf and dumped charisma to 3.
Took no ranks in any social skills. Default is 2 dice.

... took social stress negative quality...

If I'm not mistaken, 1 (number of 1s needed to glitch on 2 dice) minus 1 (social stress) is 0, ie automatically glitches.

How evil am I feeling today?

[Umidori]

Most of the time when something reduces a value by one, it reduces it to a minimum value of 1. So if you have a Platelet Factory and take 1 damage, it doesn't get reduced to 0, or if you cast a spell at a force that would make the drain 0, it ends up as a mininum of 1 in SR4 and a minumum of 2 in SR5.

The few occasions where you can reduce something to 0, like Nerve Strike reducing someone's Agility or Reaction to 0 and paralyzing them, it specifically mentions that possibility in their rules write-ups.

What I would do in this case is make it so that both 1s and 2s count toward glitches. That way, they don't automatically glitch on every social interaction ever, but they do still have an unpleasantly good chance of glitching sometimes. If they later improve their Social Skills such that they end up with 4 or more dice, then just run the Social Stress effect as normal.

~Umi

[quentra]

I've dumpstatted plenty of elves to 3 CHA. The issue is not even a single! point in con, nego, or anything? At all? I mean, you don't even have to bother with waiting on a glitch, just have a frickin KE lieutenant talk him into 'coming peacefully' (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) Or, to not be a dick, explain to the player that that is /exactly/ what will happen and that is a sad game for all, and he should probably do something about it.

[Umidori]

Well, if they don't expect to interact with people, it's still workable. I could see a total shut-in hacker manage decently with a Charisma of 3 and no Social skills, because they avoid direct interactions with people. Sure, if someone stops them on the street and asks for a cigarette they might freeze up and mumble something incoherent and turn to stare at the ground, but it shouldn't be crippling unless they need to directly engage with people socially on more than a very occasional basis.

I once played an Uncouth mountain man sniper. He was absolutely horrible at social skills, which worked out fine because he was the team's high threat murder machine, kitted out with a camouflage suit and a sawn-off .50 anti-material rifle. They didn't need him to be good socially, they needed him to eliminate target's with extreme prejudice from hiding at both extremely long and extremely close ranges. He managed to avoid a lot of problem by being content to sit in the back of the van or up in a sniping nest, hooked into the TacNet and supplying overwatch, and only making his presence known in order to kill everyone and everything. He was the team's living "Panic Button" for when the drek hit the fan.

Whenever he needed to go anywhere that involved Social interaction, he needed a teammate to do the talking for him while he kept his mouth shut, but that wasn't a problem most of the time. Basically, he never met with Johnsons, he was as physically concealed as possible at all times, and while it never happened, if he was ever stopped and questioned by a KE officer while by himself, I imagine he would have just buried a hatchet in the guy's face and ran like hell to the hills, only trying to meet up with the team after he lost the heat.

~Umi

[FuelDrop]

The quality requires that I ask for extra checks from him.

I think that I've worked his game out. He wants to use the critical glitches to harvest extra edge. The guy is an infamous minmaxer who does things like use a contact to do all his face work so he can dump his social skills.

[quentra]

Eh, that's a perfectly acceptable goal - but just remind him that social abilities work both ways. Getting arrested or persuaded when Joe Corpsec nervously half-stutters 'C-come out with your hands up!' is pretty much as close to death as a runner can get without actually dying.

[Umidori]

He could always use his Edge on important Social rolls...

~Umi

[FuelDrop]

Well, I warned him and he put a point in etiquette. That makes things easier.

He took survivors guilt, and WILL complain if I call for social checks outside of that context. Suggestions?

[Umidori]

If reasonable discussion with him doesn't work, and he's set on making your life hell with his min/maxing just to see how much he can get away with dispite your clearly spoken frustrations with him, I recommend Bubba The Love Troll.

~Umi

[Vicar]

I've dumpstatted plenty of elves to 3 CHA. The issue is not even a single! point in con, nego, or anything? At all? I mean, you don't even have to bother with waiting on a glitch, just have a frickin KE lieutenant talk him into 'coming peacefully' (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) Or, to not be a dick, explain to the player that that is /exactly/ what will happen and that is a sad game for all, and he should probably do something about it.

I had something like this once, where a player wanted to play "Jane" from Firefly. He built the character, excellent at gunning and combat stuff, but dumpstatted his Logic/Intuition (I think they were 1s. I mean, it was bad). I tried to explain to him that there would be consequences, but his response was always, "I'm Jane".

Anyway, over the course of the next several weeks, I had to shut him down on almost everything non-combat oriented, which as it turned out, was quite a lot. You see, he was the person in our group who always had the first ideas, and always said things like: "I think we should do X". To which I always replied, "No, actually, you don't." It started getting to him eventually, but I was firm and made it clear that the way he was playing the character was not who the character was. He wasn't a Face. He wasn't Smart. He was Guns and Guns All The Time.

How was the situation resolved? First thing he did, upon getting enough karma, was bump his Logic/Intuition up to average scores so I'd stop bothering him.

But then I'm an asshole of a GM, and anybody who sits down at my table better not have any attributes less than 3, or there will be consequences.

[Raiden]

*brings in cha 2 adept :3* kekeke

[quentra]

Don't listen to Vicar - he is by his own admission a dick who likes dictating how players should run their own characters. Reasonable discussion should work - don't just punish him with Bubba the Love Troll or some shit, just apply RAW fairly and delineate the situations where his issues might come up.

[Umidori]

Hey, I only advocate Bubbaing someone who won't listen to reason.

You sit them down, you say "I have serious problems with how you built your character, namely X, Y, and Z, and if you don't fix them it'll cause problems for you in these various situations". If they say, "I'm aware of these issues, and I promise to roleplay those weaknesses appropriately and deal with resulting problems appropriately in-character and in-world and without being a jerk / ruining people's fun / trying to intentionally make your life hell as a GM", then you can probably let them at least try it on a probationary perioid, but if they fail to live up to expectations, you come back and say, "This needs fixed now, or bad drek going down".

If instead they show no interest in working with you, compromising, being reasonable, or similar, feel free to have them end up in a cell with Bubba when their character flaws land them in a situation they can't handle and their team decides not to bail them out.

~Umi

[Elve]

Glitch Mechanix changed in SR5: two 1s are needed for a glitch on 2 dice

[Medicineman]

Glitch Mechanix changed in SR5: two 1s are needed for a glitch on 2 dice

thats right, you need MORE than half "1's" from the Dicepool for a Glich
(which would be 2 "1's" in this case and you can only Glitch critically)

With two Dances
Medicineman

[Slide]

For some reason I imagine woody Allen the elven shadow runner.

[Voran]

Potentially like Gary from Alphas, not intentionally socially awkward and abrasive, but it turns out that way. You don't have to suggest that the char pretends they've got autism/aspergers or the like, but they're the guy with essentially no social clues and no 'internal editing' abilities.

[Slide]

For me it's hard to hit him too badly for it. I mean 3 is "human average" so realistically he's a normal functioning person who is socially akward.
Holy shot I found a case where I'm not going out of the way to make life hard on players.

[tjn]

Before any discussion of what you think will happen, ask him what his expectation of what this specific combination would result in. Every time a GM flies off saying his player is either doing something stupid or outrageous, quite often there exists a huge disparity between what the GM expects and what the player expects from certain outcomes.

Maybe the player just wants to play Gary from Alphas like Voran posited and just didn't have the same expectation as you did from that combination.

That said, if the player is actually unabashed about minmaxing to the extent of completely dumping social skills so that the character's contacts do the entirety of the social lifting of the character, one of three things likely exists:

1. The player doesn't want to have anything to do with social stories at all. Maybe he finds them dumb, boring, or non-engaging- whatever. Purposefully forcing the character to engage in social scenes will never work, and the player will resent you for doing it. It is everyone's responsibility to facilitate the fun, and if the GM is purposefully forcing the player into scenes he find abjectly unfun, he's a shit GM.

Now if everyone else absolutely adores social stories, that player will need to compromise and allow for social stories in the game as a whole, or he's just as much of a douche as the GM in the first example. However when it comes for his time in the spotlight, it should never be a social scene. Allow him to do his legwork as a dice game, sum up the information he found, and then let him go to town with whatever part of gaming that floats his particular boat. Tell the player to ax any disadvantage relating to social scenes and just gloss over that section of the game for him.

2. The player feels constrained within the system from reaching a power level he wants to play at to the point of not caring about how bad he's powergaming the system, and the results from that choice. Everyone needs to sit down and talk about what they want to play. Most of these players reasoning comes down to "well if I had X more widgets, I wouldn't have to cheese the system." If the player would be happiest playing a Delta Grade CyberZombie Mystic Adepts with 18 grades of initiation... there is nothing wrong with letting him. Dip the sheet in XP if that's what he wants! It's okay, I promise. There is nothing that can roll enough soak to take an Orbital Bovine Bombardment to the face, and a GM can always find a way to challenge any PC.

This requires everyone at the table to want to play at that level of power. I'd imagine most wouldn't. So that player will need to compromise down to a level where he can be happy, but so can everyone else at the table. However, forcing him to play at a power level he finds unfun, and in response he munchkins to break that power level, indicates a highly toxic table where friends feel like they can't just fucking talk to each other like civilized people and expect to come to a mutually satisfying compromise for all involved.

3. The player just wants to take a shit on the game and ruin the fun for everyone else by finding a way to be a problem. It doesn't matter if you fix this problem or get him to come around to a more "reasonable" approach, because it's the internet troll taken to real life and there's nothing you can do; some people just want to watch the world burn. At this point STOP GAMING WITH HIM. Seriously, no good can come from it. Just walk away.

[ElFenrir]

I've dumpstatted plenty of elves to 3 CHA. The issue is not even a single! point in con, nego, or anything? At all? I mean, you don't even have to bother with waiting on a glitch, just have a frickin KE lieutenant talk him into 'coming peacefully' (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) Or, to not be a dick, explain to the player that that is /exactly/ what will happen and that is a sad game for all, and he should probably do something about it.

I've had a few Elves what Cha 3 as well, but it's a bit different, since I took no Social Stress and they had 3's in Etiquette and a 2-3 in a couple of other social skills(Negotiation and Intimidation or Con, depending.) I mean they were only throwing 5-6 dice but it was enough to get by.

Now that he's taken a point of Etiquette, that helps, and the glitch changes help as well. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to play a character with not so many social graces. Some of those characters actually work out pretty well. Hell, my one buddy's character is kind of odd-he has very high Charisma(Human with 5), and has Negotiations and Con-but no Intimidation(he doesn't see him threatening at all), and he has no Etiquette skill to round out the fact 'He's a likable guy, though rough around the edges and doesn't quite know how to 100% behave in situations.'

I agree that I'm not one to utterly and completely hose a character with few social graces, though enough 'bad' things(1 Cha, no social skills, flaw along with it) can add up. But indeed-seeing what the player actually wants out of a character and trying to work with each other with a concept can go a long way.

[Whipstitch]

Ah, never mind, I don't feel like an argument this morning after all.

[T2-Keks]

I mean 3 is "human average"

I am quiet new to SR5 but i had the impression the average dropped to 2. Am i wrong?
I saw a SR3->4 transformation thing where attributes where decreased to 2/3 of their SR3 values. That would make the average of 3 in SR3 to a 2 in SR4 and i guiess also in 5.
Another thing is that to have a statline of 3s at chargen you had to spent priority C for attributes which seems to be very much when playing a shadowrunner in a normal campaign.

[ElFenrir]

The whole Attribute thing is...how to say, muddy.

Even though it was claimed that 2 was 'average' in SR4, the fluff didn't support it very well(it still described 3 as average/typical.) Given that more Attribute points are given, I'm erring in the side that 3 is the standard average. Priority C attributes sort of lines up nicely with this-it's the middle/medium/average priority, and if you put an even split down the line, you get all 3's. In my head-and the chart which describes them as Weak/Underdeveloped/Typical/Improved/Superior/Max Unmodified Human is still there as well. (Also, given how Priority B was the max someone could spend on Attributes in SR4, 3 seems to be solidly back as the new 'typical.'

Skills adjusted a bit; 3 was 'Professional' in SR4, which is now 'Competent'-skills of 4 are now described as the 'Professional' level(this is understandable, given the fact skills now go twice as high, but anything above 7+ and you're getting into really really impressive ranges.)

[Vicar]

he is by his own admission a dick who likes dictating how players should run their own characters. Reasonable discussion should work

Huh. While yes I did call myself a dick, I guess I don't really understand how you got the rest from my comment, especially after I said that I tried to talk him out of it and he wouldn't budge. Second, in my mind, if a player dump-stats something, he needs to be able to role-play that. And if you go back and read my comment, all I was doing was attempting to get him to play that. Did he get frustrated? Yes. I don't deny it. But we've talked about that character since then, and he (the player) doesn't think I did anything unreasonable. All I did was attempt to get the point across that this character is not capable of doing what he's attempting to make him do.

Most RPGs are interesting in that, if you dump-stat a physical attribute, all sorts of problems come up within the game itself, just by virtue of the player always using them. But the other side of that coin is, if you dump-stat a social/mental attribute, unless you're a class/archetype that specifically uses those attributes, gameplay isn't affected much at all. And I'm sorry, but Don't Go Full Retard. Just don't do it.

[Tanegar]

He wants to use the critical glitches to harvest extra edge.

Run that by me one more time. How does one harvest extra edge from critical glitches?