So, let's talk about Trolls. Options

[Jaid]

could you at least provide a bit more detail on what search terms i should be using for those dev comments? (links would be ideal, but i'd be willing to do some searching on my own since i don't expect you to have them handy just in case some random person on the internet asks you)

[Glyph]

Jaid has this one right. The rule is seriously buried in the BBB, (it doesn't appear anyplace sensible, and it doesn't show in the index or table of contents) but you cannot augment an attribute past current value + 4. That does reduce the value of trolls, since you can no longer go for an anorexic build and then pump body via augmentations.

It is on page 94 under Spend Your Resources, last paragraph, where it talks about the restrictions when purchasing gear. It is also obliquely referenced on page 455, under reaction enhancers, where is says the wireless bonus lets the combined bonus from wired reflexes and reaction enhancers go above +4 if both have their wireless enabled.

I still think cyberlimbs are not subject to this limit because they have their own, separate Attribute ratings, but the part I quoted doesn't explicitly address augmented limits, so I suppose that's another nebulous area in the rules for now.

On a tangent, I was looking at the cyberlimbs on the other two archetypes. The sprawl ganger has a natural Agility of 4 and Strength of 7 - but he has an unmodified cyberarm, which will have Agility and Strength of 3. Whyyyyy!!???

[Xystophoroi]

My issue with Trolls.

I am new to SR with SR5. I have no history with the game or the setting, no fond memories of that game where Michelle did X with her Troll or hat really cool fiction where the Trolls did Y. I have the scant info/background/coolness factor/etc. from the core book only.

So, SR5 has to sell the Troll to me to make me want to play one. Coming into the game blind I have no reason to prefer any metatype over any other. From my P.O.V. Humans, Elves and Orks look cool. Dwarves and Trolls look like annoying extremes that will be subject to the host of aggravating player behaviours like making your size a huge character point. The Hyper focused stat points of the Troll also scream 'only melee types need apply'.

So, from my new player perspective, Trolls say to me: I am used for one character type, I'm going to be the butt of player stereotyping as the big dumb brute even if I push Logic to max and I suck away those few floating points you may have had to spend on silly/useless but characterful stuff to make yourself distinct by taking your highest priorities.

So. Rather than arguing over if in the specific a Troll is actually worthwhile or when put through a specific analysis they actualy come out n top in this build I need someone to first make me want to play a Troll. Because I don't. Noone I play with (in either of my two games) has even once expressed interest in playing a Troll. The only Troll we have come across is an NPC in Missions (Juan in Chasin' the Wind). Trolls are essentially a non-Entity in our games, no one cares.

[Surukai]

there's a big difference between the elf rigger and the troll that is anything other than a melee-focused tank build.

for starters, there's cost. the elf only invests priority D. this is quite frankly a very minor investment. whatever you were thinking of putting into priority D instead isn't going to lose much, if at all (in the case of special) by dropping it to E.

secondly, while many builds may not need massive amounts of those attributes, having a minimum of 2 agility and 3 charisma is actually fairly reasonable for almost any build. the most likely to be dumped is charisma, but the thing is, not having a 1 charisma is actually quite nice; it means you can default on charisma-based skills, which means that you don't have to invest points into the various social skills just to be able to even try at all. almost any shadowrunner can make use of skills like negotiation, con, intimidate, etc.

You are very right that Elves are far far more flexible. But, the attribute sum is compareable, the troll has just as many points to get Charisma 3 and body 2, as long as you are at all interested in body and strength, and trolls are about that so I really can't see why people who hate big strong characters pick the big strong metatype!

When going for citrus, don't go for lemons if you hate sour, pick the #&!% orange!

the only characters that make efficient use of troll attributes are those that need high values in both strength and body, and even then only if they're going beyond the maximum attributes an ork can fit in (if it's possible to reach with an ork, you're better off just making an ork, because priority C is a great deal less painful than priority B). and those are primarily going to be melee tanks, or bow/throwing adept tanks.

It is exactly that demographic trolls are there to fill. Players who want to play a big strong dude/gal. Picking troll means you are interested in those stats. Having one metatype that is slightly less effective at general things in return for having the two highest stats of every metatype in the entire game is not broken.

also, on a side note, you can't get a troll cyberlimb with strength 14. the best you can get is 13, because the customization can't exceed racial max, and the augmentation only goes up to 3. secondly, availability and cost means that even if you could get a strength 13 limb, it isn't going to be low cost, quite likely not available at chargen iirc. if it is available at chargen, you probably won't be able to buy much, if any, agility in it.

Not at all

Used full cyber arm. 0.75*(15000 for arm, 12*5k for customization (+7 strength, +2 agility)) total availability 4 (Arm) + 7 (Strength) + 2 (agility) -4 (used) = 9

+3 strength and +3 agility is 6*6500, cyberspurs is another 5000, total capacity used 9 (out of 15)

another 9k (before discount) for rating 3 armor.

We got an arm with 13 strength, 8 agility, +3 armor, +1 physical box, Spurs doing 16P AP-3,

Total cost before "used" discount, 113000 , total cost with used discount, 84750 and 1.25 essence.

85K nuyen for agility 8, strength 13, built in weapon and nice armor is an extremely good deal.

Some 60k nuyen for just the base arm with "only" max strength and max agility for a troll if you are on a budget.

Add exceptional attribute to boost a stat of your choice by 1. The Used reduction still has more room. Or go with only 9 strength and 5 agility and go full price not used.

Resources C is enough to get this and have plenty to spare.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

On a tangent, I was looking at the cyberlimbs on the other two archetypes. The sprawl ganger has a natural Agility of 4 and Strength of 7 - but he has an unmodified cyberarm, which will have Agility and Strength of 3. Whyyyyy!!???

Cause he is a Ganger and couldn't afford anything better, obviously. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Sengir]

In 3E you could get around the worst of the mental attribute restrictions ( for a shaman or conjuror at least) by using metavariants. Fomori used to drop the charisma penalty (and lose the dermal deposits) in exchange for one less point of strength and body.

Some exotic metavariant isn't really a satisfying solution. Especially because it does not solve the problem that a lot of Awakened and TMs are not supposed to be charismatic in any form and still are forced to play the womanizer type.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Some exotic metavariant isn't really a satisfying solution. Especially because it does not solve the problem that a lot of Awakened and TMs are not supposed to be charismatic in any form and still are forced to play the womanizer type.

Curious... Why would an Awakened or Emergent Character be any less Charismatic than a Non-Awakened, Non-Emergent Character? That makes absolutely no sense.

[tjn]

You are very right that Elves are far far more flexible. But, the attribute sum is compareable,

This has been debunked earlier in the thread if you had read the entire thing. Just because the numbers of attributes are equal, does not mean, in any way, shape, or form, that the character types are balanced. Specifically because of that flexibility is essential to the priority system, because the lower you can place one priority, the better off every other priority is in relation to it, and the converse is true such that every time you're forced to place a high priority (say, taking a Troll), every other priority suffers in relation. For example, a Troll simply can't take Skills A and a maxed Magic Attribute, yet every other metatype has that option available to them.

the troll has just as many points to get Charisma 3 and body 2, as long as you are at all interested in body and strength,

But the converse is almost never the case, because no one is interested in getting 5's in both STR and BOD. If no one is choosing to spend those chargen resources like a Troll when they have the option to not spend them like a Troll, forcing the Troll to spend the chargen resources in a way no one else would, is a penalty not an advantage.

and trolls are about that so I really can't see why people who hate big strong characters pick the big strong metatype!

They don't hate big strong characters, they'd like to play a Troll who isn't just a melee monster and still be near to humans at that role. Trolls make excellent melee monsters, so good that they're arguably too good, but that's balanced against how they are consistently worse than any other race in any other possible role. They pay for being a god in one role by being craptacular in all others. Honestly, if the game straight up told the player that Trolls are best at melee and will be a step behind everyone else in everything else, I might not have as much of a problem, but they didn't and now playing a Troll Shaman, which was an archetype for most of the game's existence, is something of a trap build.

When going for citrus, don't go for lemons if you hate sour, pick the #&!% orange!

It's more like I'm reaching in the orange bin, same as I was for the past twenty years, and suddenly I'm pulling out a lemon. There's a mild shock to that, especially as the orange bin was never relabelled.

It is exactly that demographic trolls are there to fill. Players who want to play a big strong dude/gal. Picking troll means you are interested in those stats.

Some of us have been with SR for a long, long time. Picking Troll does not automatically mean you want those stats, but it is only through the lens of this edition does Troll become the race only chosen if you want more STR than an Orc can give you. Charismatic Troll Thrash Metal Rocker cum face? Yeah, no. Troll Street Shaman? You can, but you're hobbling yourself. Back in 3rd we had a Troll Decker that just wanted to be small and petite due to being Japanese and a lot of self-hatred, but she could be "herself" in the matrix, and she also was a damn good decker because skills worked differently. Yeah, I wouldn't want to recreate that character under 5th with needing Resources, Skills, and Meta all needing to be high. These concepts can be worked around in 5th, but no matter what, the character will be 2-3 dice behind and at this point you're just fighting the system, especially as there's a much easier solution if you just give up on being a Troll.

Having one metatype that is slightly less effective at general things in return for having the two highest stats of every metatype in the entire game is not broken.

It is when virtually no other character would ever spend the attribute points to get to the Troll's starting point, if they aren't hyperfocused on melee.

We got an arm with 13 strength, 8 agility, +3 armor, +1 physical box, Spurs doing 16P AP-3,

You understand you still need a normal STR of 9 and a normal AGI of 4 to use that arm, right? Half the point of the convoluted cyberarm rules is to make up for low physical stats and perhaps shave a priority level off of Attributes. But when trying to hit the racial maximum with a cyberarm, you're still pretty much maxing the attributes anyways, which then requires Resources, Meta, and Attributes at a high level, leaving Skills for D. Yeah, it's workable, but the character is giving up so much flexibility, especially in light of the fact that with just 100 nuyen, the throwing skill, and a wireless link, anyone can put out an undodgeable 16P -2 AP.

[Sengir]

That makes absolutely no sense.

...which is why I didn't claim that.

[Jaid]

Add exceptional attribute to boost a stat of your choice by 1. The Used reduction still has more room. Or go with only 9 strength and 5 agility and go full price not used.

cyberlimb customizations are based on racial maximum, not your personal maximum.

as to your other points:

more flexibility provides more power. even more to the point, more options that people want is more power than having fewer options and being forced to take some options that almost nobody wants.

and, as has been pointed out, trolls don't have to be melee builds. they make very good melee builds (though not exactly leaps and bounds ahead of an ork, or even a human or elf, for that matter), but there shouldn't be this pressure towards making only one character type. i can pick any other metatype and fairly comfortably make an effective character of almost any archetype (and i only say almost because non-support technomancers are going to suffer just from being a technomancer, regardless of metatype. i do feel i should point out that troll technomancers suffer more than other technomancers, though). and then i can compare it to a similar troll, and the troll will be behind in multiple areas, in some cases in fairly crucial areas. except, of course, for melee builds (and even then, some of the metatypes compare pretty favourably too).

heck, depending on the type of melee build, trolls aren't even great at that, either (for example, if the form of melee i am using is not strength-dependent; shock gloves, monowhip, etc).

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

...which is why I didn't claim that.

But you did, and I quote...

...it does not solve the problem that a lot of Awakened and TMs are not supposed to be charismatic in any form and still are forced to play the womanizer type.

My question is... What did you mean by that statement? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Sponge]

When going for citrus, don't go for lemons if you hate sour, pick the #&!% orange!

On the subject of cybernetics and choice of citrus, this is relevant.

Some exotic metavariant isn't really a satisfying solution.

Especially since they are regional/cultural in nature and your character concept and/or particular game setting may not work at all with being from the particular region/culture corresponding to the one metavariant that suits your mechanical needs.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Especially since they are regional/cultural in nature and your character concept and/or particular game setting may not work at all with being from the particular region/culture corresponding to the one metavariant that suits your mechanical needs.

Cross-pollination is a thing by the 2070's.

[Jaid]

But you did, and I quote...



My question is... What did you mean by that statement? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

i would say that forced is rather a strong word for it, but basically:

to make a technomancer or magician which gets the most out of being a technomancer or magician, you kinda need high charisma. you can't be a wallflower, or a person who just has no clue how to talk to others, or a rude person who is just plain disgusting, crude, etc. if you want certain benefits (and getting multiple bound spirits/sprites can be a pretty significant benefit on it's own, even if you have no other use for charisma - which is never the case for technomancers, and only sometimes the case depending on tradition for magicians).

but again, i would say that forced is rather too strong. you can absolutely be a magician or technomancer and have awful charisma. you can even be a pretty good magician with awful charisma (technomancers have rather more of a rough time of it, but it is possible, albeit more limiting than it is for a magician).

but to make the strongest magician or technomancer, you do need to have charisma, and the more you have, the better you are at being a magician or technomancer.

[Sponge]

Cross-pollination is a thing by the 2070's.

It is, but that's a different character concept...

[RHat]

Of course, having a high Charisma but being bad with people is probably one of the smarter uses for Uncouth.

[Jaid]

Of course, having a high Charisma but being bad with people is probably one of the smarter uses for Uncouth.

no, it really isn't.

one of the smarter uses for uncouth would be to represent someone who is literally incapable of social interaction with other human beings, probably due to some form of severe mental disability. because for any other concept, you're going to have to take skill ranks in social skills just to be able to accomplish the most very basic task related to those skills, and if you have a good charisma to back it up, you're actually pretty likely to succeed.

i mean, we're talking about someone who is incapable of lying, intimidation, negotiation, etc.

an uncouth person is a person who when their parents told them to clean their room and they didn't want to do it, instead of saying "i'll do it in 10 minutes, i'm in the middle of something right now", they would sit there hopelessly clueless as to what they could possibly say to express a desire to do that task later (or more likely never quite get around to doing it), because that's negotiating (or lying, in the parenthetical case), and the uncouth person cannot even attempt that without training.

we're talking about someone who probably has difficulty even grasping the concept of interpersonal interaction, here.

what would have made a lot more sense would have been a quality that basically gives gremlins for social interactions. and also, if you want to call it uncouth, not making it apply to intimidation.

[Sengir]

My question is... What did you mean by that statement? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

That "a lot of Awakened and TMs are not supposed to be charismatic", for the same reason a lot of mundane characters are not supposed to be charismatic -- character concept is "social like a brick", dumpstat, player doesn't like to RP conversations, whatever. Problem is, for playing a shaman, gode, hougan, or [Shinto priest] you need a high Charisma, because apparently reclusive shamans, socially awkward godes, or just plain asshole Shintoists who are still powerful don't exist. And TMs...even if you choose a non-Charisma stream, they still need at least average stats in it or die from virtually stubbed toe. Which is stupid in general, and completely breaks when trolls enter the picture.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

i would say that forced is rather a strong word for it, but basically:

to make a technomancer or magician which gets the most out of being a technomancer or magician, you kinda need high charisma. you can't be a wallflower, or a person who just has no clue how to talk to others, or a rude person who is just plain disgusting, crude, etc. if you want certain benefits (and getting multiple bound spirits/sprites can be a pretty significant benefit on it's own, even if you have no other use for charisma - which is never the case for technomancers, and only sometimes the case depending on tradition for magicians).

but again, i would say that forced is rather too strong. you can absolutely be a magician or technomancer and have awful charisma. you can even be a pretty good magician with awful charisma (technomancers have rather more of a rough time of it, but it is possible, albeit more limiting than it is for a magician).

but to make the strongest magician or technomancer, you do need to have charisma, and the more you have, the better you are at being a magician or technomancer.

See, I approach that from a different position. Attribute of 3 is average, and is not bad. If you want to be an unsociable character, don't take any Social Skills. Simple as that. Stat 3 with no skills defaults you to 2 Dice and there you go.

Charisma 3 is perfectly viable for a socially inept Magician or Technomancer (My current Technomancer has a Charisma 3). In fact, my last 2 Awakened/Emergent Characters have BOTH had Charisma 3. Average is Average for a reason. As for strongest, well, you have to accept that he will likely be fairly social, after all, he is the best he can be.

[Glyph]

Cause he is a Ganger and couldn't afford anything better, obviously. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

My point was that the ganger's artificial arm is worse than his natural one - so why replace it to begin with?

Curious... Why would an Awakened or Emergent Character be any less Charismatic than a Non-Awakened, Non-Emergent Character? That makes absolutely no sense.

The problem is that they made an Attribute associated with social ability one that is needed to be effective at roles (mage, technomancer) that don't necessarily have anything to do with high social ability. It's kind of like if they made Strength the linked Attribute for hardware tests, so despite wanting to play a skinny geek decker with no close combat ability, you have to play a buffed-up dude if you want to be any good at hardware. Only Charisma is even worse, because it is a mental stat. So if you want to play a nerdy technomancer or a reclusive shaman, you have to either have a low Charisma and be less effective, or have a high Charisma and have your character's personality sabotaged by the game mechanics.

On the other hand, those two roles are ones where mental abilities translate into power, so it actually makes sense that a curmudgeonly type would be weaker due to lacking, essentially, force of personality. There are more than a few roles where playing to concept costs you mechanically, and they can range from slightly suboptimal to all but unplayable.

Especially since they are regional/cultural in nature and your character concept and/or particular game setting may not work at all with being from the particular region/culture corresponding to the one metavariant that suits your mechanical needs.

The good thing about the U.S. being a melting pot of immigrants is that you can play a Greek, British, Indian, etc. metatype without needing to actually be from one of those countries. SR5 seems to have been designed with an axe to grind against any option that was effective in SR4, so if they do bring metavariants back, expect them to take a nerf bat to a few of the favorites such as fomorians.

[Jaid]

See, I approach that from a different position. Attribute of 3 is average, and is not bad. If you want to be an unsociable character, don't take any Social Skills. Simple as that. Stat 3 with no skills defaults you to 2 Dice and there you go.

Charisma 3 is perfectly viable for a socially inept Magician or Technomancer (My current Technomancer has a Charisma 3). In fact, my last 2 Awakened/Emergent Characters have BOTH had Charisma 3. Average is Average for a reason. As for strongest, well, you have to accept that he will likely be fairly social, after all, he is the best he can be.

if charisma 3 is average, and 0 is the normal level of skill for someone who hasn't been trained in it, how exactly is a charisma 3 character with no social skills socially awkward? (at least, they aren't more socially awkward than most people at any rate).

[Grinder]

Based on dev commentary on thd other boards, its quite intentional.

Really? Can you provide a link, would be much appreciated. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[RHat]

Really? Can you provide a link, would be much appreciated. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I'll have to do some digging at some point to see if I can track it back down - it was early days; didn't take long for people to start complaining about the Cyberlimb of Awesome still being a thing.

[Cain]

See, I approach that from a different position. Attribute of 3 is average, and is not bad. If you want to be an unsociable character, don't take any Social Skills. Simple as that. Stat 3 with no skills defaults you to 2 Dice and there you go.

Charisma 3 is perfectly viable for a socially inept Magician or Technomancer (My current Technomancer has a Charisma 3). In fact, my last 2 Awakened/Emergent Characters have BOTH had Charisma 3. Average is Average for a reason. As for strongest, well, you have to accept that he will likely be fairly social, after all, he is the best he can be.

While I agree that 3 is average (and perfectly functional) it's also not exceptional nor is it a dump stat. If you're dumping strength or charisma, you don't set it to 3. So, if your troll has a Charisma of 3, it's not a dump stat; you've actually invested in it. He's not socially awkward, at least not in relation to the average person. He's exactly the same.

[Surukai]

This has been debunked earlier in the thread if you had read the entire thing. Just because the numbers of attributes are equal, does not mean, in any way, shape, or form, that the character types are balanced. Specifically because of that flexibility is essential to the priority system, because the lower you can place one priority, the better off every other priority is in relation to it, and the converse is true such that every time you're forced to place a high priority (say, taking a Troll), every other priority suffers in relation. For example, a Troll simply can't take Skills A and a maxed Magic Attribute, yet every other metatype has that option available to them.

But the converse is almost never the case, because no one is interested in getting 5's in both STR and BOD. If no one is choosing to spend those chargen resources like a Troll when they have the option to not spend them like a Troll, forcing the Troll to spend the chargen resources in a way no one else would, is a penalty not an advantage.

Troll can instead pick Attributes A and Troll B and have more total than anyone else so I really fail to see the problem. As a metatype with very high bonuses to stats they have the luxury of getting a huge total but at the relatively small cost of NOT being able to dump stats but who does that anyway?

Even with attributes E you have points to get all stats to a decent level as if you were a human with Attributes B. Your worst stats sum is comparable with the human max or near max. Trolls are a front loaded attributes heavy metatype and balance wise it would be terrible if they could get those awesome stats for free while everyone else has to pay for them. Even if it means they get a little pigeon holed to melee/tank/ish builds.

To be able to get 24 + 8 = 32 total attribute points is not a penalty, it is a high specialization privilege only trolls have. The closest runner up are orcs with 24+5, one point short of a full priority worth of attribute points LESS than the troll. (priorities generally give +4 attribute points per level, except E)

They don't hate big strong characters, they'd like to play a Troll who isn't just a melee monster and still be near to humans at that role. Trolls make excellent melee monsters, so good that they're arguably too good, but that's balanced against how they are consistently worse than any other race in any other possible role. They pay for being a god in one role by being craptacular in all others. Honestly, if the game straight up told the player that Trolls are best at melee and will be a step behind everyone else in everything else, I might not have as much of a problem, but they didn't and now playing a Troll Shaman, which was an archetype for most of the game's existence, is something of a trap build.

You make a very good point but the fluff of troll shamans are not handled well in the game mechanics and I am willing to agree that it is a bit at the game mechanic's fault but hear me out on this

A troll shaman has 2 less drain resistance than a human

But 4 more "mana regen" (thanks to higher body). And a full 8 more dice at recovering from physical drain.

High body shamans burn through stun quickly because they are slightly worse at resisting drain, but they recover much much faster. With higher soak total they might end up getting comparable levels of stun boxes in a regular combat.

Troll shaman are far more effective than a human shaman at nuking people with F12 instakill fireballs. The troll gets around 0,67 more phys damage each cast, but he can take more (more phys boxes) and he'll recover by the next day ready for more, while the weak human sits with slow healing physical drain.

The troll shaman only sucks if you only go for "Never take drain"-caster. I know from playing SR3 (and Sr4) that that is the usual path to take and only then does drain resistance matter above all else.

Troll shaman can get 8 Charisma from only 4 ranks focused concentration + increase charisma self buff. That is still decent and requires less karma for positive qualities etc.

With higher body for recovery and the change to always get +4 augmented maximum a troll shaman has 4((IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) charisma compared to human 6(10) instead of SR4 where they had 4(6)..

4 is the sweetspot for a F4 attribute boost. It uses the full force and requires no higher force. This makes foci optimally cheap and happens to be where availability is best. The human going for F6 sustaining can't affort the foci, it has high availability and costs more karma to bind and leaves no room left to avoid addiction. Charisma 4 is not that terrible when you look at it this way.

That said, the hermetic troll is still better, getting Logic 4 (not maxed) means he gets Body 10 (maxed) and enjoy everything else a shaman does. But, if I recall, my poster from SR3 at home has a troll combat mage, not troll combat shaman or did I miss something?

Troll combat mage is a good mage and the best at nuking enemies with F12 doomballs thanks to his much faster recovery and he is able to have reliable statboost to get decent drain resist. Will 4(8 with 1 cheap foci), logic 4 (8 with focused concentration), body 10 and an F6 spirit of man supplying increased reflexes and you have a monster mage that throws devastating fireballs and makes stuff go splat with excellent performance. That troll mage is anything but craptastic. In fact I'm scared of her!

It's more like I'm reaching in the orange bin, same as I was for the past twenty years, and suddenly I'm pulling out a lemon. There's a mild shock to that, especially as the orange bin was never relabelled.

I would agree 100% if we talked about SR4 where strength was absolute crap and had no value even for a melee character. Trolls were absolutely useless in SR4 but I don't feel the same in SR5.

Some of us have been with SR for a long, long time. Picking Troll does not automatically mean you want those stats, but it is only through the lens of this edition does Troll become the race only chosen if you want more STR than an Orc can give you. Charismatic Troll Thrash Metal Rocker cum face? Yeah, no. Troll Street Shaman? You can, but you're hobbling yourself. Back in 3rd we had a Troll Decker that just wanted to be small and petite due to being Japanese and a lot of self-hatred, but she could be "herself" in the matrix, and she also was a damn good decker because skills worked differently. Yeah, I wouldn't want to recreate that character under 5th with needing Resources, Skills, and Meta all needing to be high. These concepts can be worked around in 5th, but no matter what, the character will be 2-3 dice behind and at this point you're just fighting the system, especially as there's a much easier solution if you just give up on being a Troll.
It is when virtually no other character would ever spend the attribute points to get to the Troll's starting point, if they aren't hyperfocused on melee.
You understand you still need a normal STR of 9 and a normal AGI of 4 to use that arm, right? Half the point of the convoluted cyberarm rules is to make up for low physical stats and perhaps shave a priority level off of Attributes. But when trying to hit the racial maximum with a cyberarm, you're still pretty much maxing the attributes anyways, which then requires Resources, Meta, and Attributes at a high level, leaving Skills for D. Yeah, it's workable, but the character is giving up so much flexibility, especially in light of the fact that with just 100 nuyen, the throwing skill, and a wireless link, anyone can put out an undodgeable 16P -2 AP.

Cyberarm doesn't care about your current stats, only natural maximum for your metatype. No problem at all getting that cyberarm of doom and spend all other attribute points on making a character with awesome stats.

The gaping black hole between priority points and karma makes skills stupid anyway. Your 25 bonus karma gives you 10-ish skillpoints so even skills E have plenty to spend on all the needed skills that you need a few ranks in to survive (Computer 1 to handle a commlink, etiquette and others) and use your priority points to max out unarmed, automatics and perception. (I think this is a problem too, why penalize players who DON'T go for only maxed out skills by making them suffer?)

The grenades being superior to expensive arms and throwing being stupid is a huge problem I've whined about for months in almost every post on this forum. I can only agree that grenades break everything, from troll tanks to elf shamans and make everything irrelevant. I have posted about grenades here
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...c=39934&hl=