That is so very wrong.

BitBasher and I have in the past bashed heads over various topics, but his sig says it all: "It's not a matter of the players versus the GM, it's the players with the GM" (paraphrased)

You're not in a computer game with fixed, arbitrary numbers and you are not working in a vaccuum, your actions having little or no impact on others near and around you. You are playing in concert with other players in a story being told or refereed by another person.

I have played with gamers like you and watched more than one game disintegrate because one calculator holding player who stands on one rule and rapes it endlessly.

Which in turn forces the GM to stop it and start pre-emptively examining every action and character that player generates so as not to abuse the game which, in turn, gets very tedious for other players who are trying to have fun and not endure another session of "oh lord, what cheesy bit of munchkinism is he going to attempt to mutilate now?" The players should understand that the GM is not perfect nor are the published rules going to be perfect and not strive to abuse the situation in order to prove that rules may indeed be broken.

And yes, while a runner may be performing like a starving sewer rat or a hungry lawyer, it does _not_ mean that the _player_ should threaten the GM's family, take incriminating photos or debate the merits of different ammo loads while plotting to execute the pizza delivery driver and steal his uniform.

The character is not the player and the player is not the character -- that kind of idiocy results in kids killing each other in sewers and blurring the line between fantasy and reality.

So no, the genre of the game does not dictate how I as a player should approach the rules and more to the point abuse the rules in the name of the game.

The caveat being -- a GM is welcome to run any sort of game he (or she) likes with any particular theme, flavor or genre to suit personal tastes. If he wants to run a "no holds barred, do your worst because I'm going to do it to you" sort of game, then by all means take advantage of "broken" rules because the GM won't care and will most likely return the favor in spades.

Those kinds of games invariably have players yelping about how they "killed Tiamat twice" and the problems of paper-training Cthulhu because he's absolutely murder on the carpets.

-Siege

That's false. Well not entirely, but you are performing these actions from the point of view of you, the player instead of the character. This makes it metagaming, essentially cheating or munchkinizing. (First time I believe that I have ever used that word on these forums directed at someone.)

Are all or most of your character's knowledge skills devoted to thinks like "Studies of long term stress and performance results of using multiple layers of Personal Body Armor suring strenuous conditions", "Ballistics studies of modern firearms and penetration values" or "Exactly what can a mage cast and resisty drain from statistically speaking.? I really doubt it. And because of the extensive number crunching you do your character has ZERO knowledge in all the applicable areas to have thought of that himself. Don't tell me he lookeds it up, because without a passing familiarity (and skill in) the topic he isn't going to know the bullshit from the facts. Yur character doesn't now these things.

Most of these things are not even quantifiable in the game world. In the game world there is no "S Rating Drain" nor is there "20d6 to resist damage" nor are there enough people willing to risk death or magic loss to give you a % number for it.

I'll now quote Siege's signature:

So far not one person in my shadowrun game that had read Polaris's posts had thought it unreasonable that Polaris was serving the aforementioned purpose.

I think this has been said any number of times already, but Polaris, Shadowrun is not a game limited to only one genre, playing style, or challenge level. You play in a campaign in which it is apparently necessary that every shaman have a starting willpower of 9 just in order to survive and prosper; many of those here do not. Can you - please - simply accept that?

Hell, my current character is a bio-rejecting human with magic resistance. No magic, no cyber, no bioware - he has to rely entirely on skill, gear, and brains to survive. I have no doubt that in your campaign he would rapidly be reduced to a smear of blood on the pavement, but in our campaign, he's done quite well for himself so far. We play in very different campaigns, ok?

Maybe you should read what you post. You just admitted that Increase Reflexes is, in fact, inferior to cyber and bio methods because it doesn't enhance Reaction (which I pointed out several posts back, but you ignored and evaded it then). Your other "reasons" are irrelevant (as is the fact that they're based entirely on unwarranted assumptions about the interpersonal relationships between people's characters). Now, seeing as how, as you have admitted, Increase Reflexes is inferior to other methods of accomplishing the same thing, it obviously can't be unbalanced. Powerful, yes, unbalanced, no. Unless you're saying that all methods of increasing reflexes are unbalancing?

How about proving that there is, in fact, a balance problem there? If you amend that to "every mage who expects to be involved in combat regularly should take it", then I'll agree quite readily. However, that doesn't make it a balance problem any more than the statement "every mundane who expects to be involved in combat regularly should take some sort of reflex-enhancing cyberware" makes wired reflexes unbalanced.

And, as I pointed out before, it's not exactly cheap. 65,000Y worth of starting resources makes it more expensive than all of the cyber methods that it's clearly superior to, and all of the methods that're more expensive than it is are clearly superior, except for Boosted 3, which is debatable. Boosted 3 is slightly inferior, by the numbers, but has convenience advantages (and also some disadvantages, I'll admit... and whether inability to be deactivated is a bigger disadvantage than vulnerability to astral barriers and so on depends largely on the game) and the ability to be combined with some of the other Reaction/Reflex-enhancing 'ware.

Oh, and you also just admitted that its effects are "not a huge deal"... so it's obviously not so powerful as to be that "serious" balance problem you were moaning about earlier...

It's cheating in my book, and if you insisted on it in my game, I'd eject you (actually, you'd never get that far, because I'd laugh in your face when you showed me your maxed-Will dwarf albino Bonus Attribute (Will) Crab shaman stats (at least it's not a gnome)). Really, they expect gamers to use a little common sense instead of rules-lawyering munchkinism. I'd make you record your actual results when you made the Increase (Attribute) roll, and re-evaluate the successes when the Decrease (Attribute) was dropped. I'd do that for any sustained spell where the TN might change, actually... so you can add having your Reaction boosted as a potential method of dropping the Increase Reflexes spell (though, I'll admit, it'd be a pretty silly way for an enemy to do it). There's precedent for this in the handling of illusions where people might be wandering in and out of the target area.

The fact that you assign blame to writers of rules means that something is bad about these rules. Now, a rule that is never actually applied can surely do no harm, so that means that these rules are only bad when someone plays with them. So now you have a thing which is only a bad thing when someone uses it.

So who is really to blame, the creator or the user?

There's another section in the book that's perfectly legal. The GM is always right. If you think the book says one thing, and the GM says it means another-- according to the book, you are wrong.

You don't fix bad rules by issuing a thousand pages of legalese. You fix a problem by telling players to have fun with whatever floats their boat. You fix this problem by banning legalistic munchkins from games where you intend to roleplay, and by settling back to enjoy the game you want to play.

If you're going to assign blame, it goes to the rules-lawyers who make the game less fun for others.

I think we have different notions of balance. Creating a game system which is immune to abuse is, in my opinion, impossible. You set your sights far too high.

I ask you to read my first post again. The offending rules are only imbalanced when used in a certain irresponsible way. I offer the analogy of a power tool. The creator of the tool is hardly at fault if it is used stupidly and cuts off someones foot.

Which I am not the only person that has stated his belief that you are directly doing on purpose. I am in fact pointing this out to the admins. I am showing how you yourself are violating those Terms. Nowhere in my above post did I refer to you as anything other than a troll, and I specifically explained why I believed you were a troll, in explanation of the first rule I quoted above. I did it in a manner that made absolutely no other derogatory comments nor accusations about yourself. Polaris you may disagree you are a troll, but obviously I am not alone in believing that you are. This is why I made the previous statement. It was not to you, but to dislpay the evidence of my belief to the other readers of the thread.

This is not the case here, though. Few will say that the rules for dwarves, albinos, crab shamans, or bonus attribute edges are faulty. Rather, when used inappropriately (by being combined so often as to call them "standard"), they are able to cut off proverbial feet. The tools here are not faulty.

And yes, I agree that finders of loopholes should not be berated, but you have said yourself that you are not a mere finder of loopholes. You consider it a virtue to use those loopholes as much as possible, which is certainly a bad thing.

I don't really find that Shadowrun encourages an adversarial player/GM relationship more than any other game. In my opinion, that entirely depends on the people you play with, not the game system.

Have you considered that your policy of purposely exploiting loopholes probably encourages that sort of relationship?

Err... there's no interpretation involved there. Going by the FAQ, that's exactly what it says. Which is obviously not what it's supposed to say (from context clues, common sense, etc), so it desperately needs to be changed. Any GM who wasn't already allowing it to happen that way has most likely house ruled it (I know I did) to something more in line with what the FAQ appears to want to say (but says wrong).

As far as decrease and increase stat spells are concerned, I think an errata or FAQ answer is well worth having. I can think of quite a few instances where it might be useful to know how an increase cast on a decrease works (or vice versa). There currently aren't any canon rules keeping you from taking Polaris' point of view since it does appear to work the way he suggests... but there are also probably few, if any, GMs that will allow it to work that way in their games(through house rules, aka "common sense", aka "GM is always right").

Can a rules system avoid having holes? No. Can it errata/FAQ the spots where the rules are hazy and produce odd/counterintuitive/unbalancing results? Yes.

I've never had a problem with rules loopholes (I rather like finding them, myself). However, suggesting that it's required for players to find and then use them is not something I agree with. Also, if I remember correctly, I don't agree with Polaris' reading of the armor layering rules. I'd look it up, but I believe the thread containing that viewpoint was removed. That, and this isn't the thread for that argument.