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Schaeffer
How do you GM's and players out there handle characters with low Essence scores? What do you use as guidelines for them in social situations or in their own behavior? I would think that the lower the Essence score, the more removed the individual is from being stable or "human"; perhaps even behaving more machine-like the lower their Essence becomes. Do any of you even pay attention to that sort of thing? Any advice is much appreciated. smile.gif
booklord
I don't. Unless the cyberware is obvious or you in a social situation that involves a lot of astral assensing it shoudn't come up.

A character with an obvious cyber-skull and nothing else would probably get a bigger penalty than someone whose essense is skirting 0 barrier from a lot of bioware.
Taki
I would say there is direct and undirect effects :
someone with an obvious cyber arm could directly make some people unconfident.
the same guy with heavy simsense soft running (like living in the wonderland of alice), or modified reaction (bioware cyberware or drugs), this will freak the guy out, and then affect the persons around.
2bit
I think most people fall into the same category as booklord. I haven't played with any rules like that lately. It's tough for me to reconcile bioware having an identical effect on essence as cyberware; also a Face character who gets implants to help them with their uh, Facing, shouldn't be faced with social skill penalties.

In SR2 I said that characters with sub-1 essence had +1 TN's to social skills, sub-.5 had +2's, and sub-.1 had +3's. This was to represent the increasing loss of ability to feel, recognize, or express strong emotion.
In SR3, Adept powers became essentially as good or better than cyber, so I didn't want to penalize sammies.

I think there's untapped potential here though.
Schaeffer
I guess I'm asking more if anyone based the behavior of their character, or imposed restrictions on character behavior (in the case of a GM) using the character's Essence score as a guideline, and if so, how?

For example, would a party animal, or emotionally-needy girlfriend, or suave casanova, each starting at full Essence, remain that way as their Essence was reduced with the introduction of cyberware/bioware? I would think their personality would change with time. I also think this would be more likely with cyberware than bioware.

I'm just curious if anyone had come up with guidelines for this sort of thing, and do like 2bit's houserule he used in earlier games.
sorcel
Personally, I think this sort of problem is best left to roleplaying. I'd prefer to play an Essence-impaired character to the hilt and earn my Karma awards than try to play him like a normal character with GM-fiat penalties.

-S
Critias
I played chrome-heavy characters in CP:2020 long before I did in Shadowrun (tended to play mages and deckers, early on in my SR career), so I always kind of had that "you lose Empathy" mindset when I started getting more cyberware-laden SR characters. The only difference was I replaced Empathy (the CP:2020 attribute) with empathy (the word). When my primary street sammie type dropped below a 1.0 Essence, I, for lack of a better term, played up a disconnect from the rest of humanity. I researched sociopathy a little, and started to act a little different.

When around other people, he's still his fun loving old self -- likeable (when he wasn't angry), a little sarcastic, glib, smooth talking (decent social skills, after all), always handy with a one-liner to break tension, that sort of thing. He can certainly still lie just fine, negotiate well enough, all that.

But, when he's by himself? Just him and some hostiles/neutrals? He'll shoot a man in the head for throwin' a punch. No middle ground. I've taken to calling it "selective conscience." When he's around people who have an opinion that matters to him, he's a pretty nice guy (and around his daughter, especially, he's careful not to do anything "bad"). But when left to his own devices, around no one but strangers, he just couldn't give two tugs about whether the people around him are breathing or not. Cheerfully.

No actual rules, no hard and fast "do it just like this" guidelines, nothing like that. It just sort of made sense after a while, from both a dipping Essence score (0.19, IIRC), and the sheer body count that a long-running Street Sam gets, anyhow. After your first hundred, who's really still counting?
irdeggman
QUOTE (sorcel)
Personally, I think this sort of problem is best left to roleplaying. I'd prefer to play an Essence-impaired character to the hilt and earn my Karma awards than try to play him like a normal character with GM-fiat penalties.

-S

I agree with this.

They will already suffer in-game mechanic issues with magical healing so they don't need any more on top of that.

Keep it role-playing and reward accordingly.
Charon
I'd play it like booklord.

Especially since as pointed out Physads are no longer less powerful than cybered PC.

In Sr4, even the Smartlink, which was about the only piece of cyber a SR3 physads might have been willing to sacrifice 1 point of essence/magic for, is now offering the same offensive bonus if you just link it to contact lens instead.

Meanwhile, Cybered PC still stand out due to aura and detection device.

Enough is enough. No need to make them asocial on top of that. Especially since most Street Sam aren't social powerhouse to start with!

Usually, a cybered type of character starts with a low essence and will keep it for the rest of the game. Did his personality change when he got his cyber? Perhaps, but the stats he has now reflect his social aptitude now. If he has anormally high social skills for that kind of archetyoe, then good for him ; he has adapted well.

The archetype Street Sam in SR4 has charisma 2 and negociation at 2. Enough to get by. But if you raise his threshold by 1 on social test to account for his cyber, he might as well have no social skill! In that kind of campaign he might as well have gone with charisma 1, no skill and invest the BP elsewhere.

Don't punish the Cybered PC who make an effort not to suck at anything social by raising their threshold or taking away some of their few dice! You'll only end up with cyber-based PC who systematcially tank their charisma since they have no hope of making it useful anyway.

---

Only for truly outalndish cyber would I inflict penalties in certain situation.

Even an obvious cyberarm is no big deal. There are probably several war veterans or any kind of blue collar workers who ended up with an obvious cyberarms after an accident. Isn't it the cheapest alternative? (Don't have my book right now)

Making a show out of having Wired Reflex is probably going to cause much more inconfort in viewers than a cyber arm.
knasser
I don't play this angle to essence loss at all. If someone was disabled and had to get a cyberlimb, would that make them less "human"? Absolutely not!

I can see where they were coming from with this in earlier editions. It's a cyberpunk thing. Someone trading parts of their own body for machines in order to become more powerful - maybe that does sound de-humanizing. But in this case, such a person is like that therefore they make the decision, not make the decision and then become like that.

Besides all that, it's unfair to place a role-playing straight-jacket on one class of character when others (Adept, Magician) can achieve the same bonuses whilst playing who they want to play.
Moon-Hawk
Given the way PCs tend to act, especially near-zero essence sams when they realize they have the super-human powers that they do, usually accounts for all the psychosis I desire. biggrin.gif
Cynic project
QUOTE (Schaeffer)
I guess I'm asking more if anyone based the behavior of their character, or imposed restrictions on character behavior (in the case of a GM) using the character's Essence score as a guideline, and if so, how?

For example, would a party animal, or emotionally-needy girlfriend, or suave casanova, each starting at full Essence, remain that way as their Essence was reduced with the introduction of cyberware/bioware? I would think their personality would change with time. I also think this would be more likely with cyberware than bioware.

I'm just curious if anyone had come up with guidelines for this sort of thing, and do like 2bit's houserule he used in earlier games.

tell you what, what would a party animal, or emotionally-needy girlfriend, or suave casanova, act the same after killing a lone start for the first time?Or what about the first time they killed someone with collateral damage?Or the first time they took a job that was nothing but wet work?

THe point is this, why should cybeware make you change anymore than any other factors in shadowrun?
Shrike30
I let characters make a "Sense Motive" test (Charisma + Intuition) with a Threshold equal to the target's Essence (rounded down) to get an idea of how cybered they are.

Obviously, if you've only got a couple of points worth of 'ware, your threshold is 4-5, and even if they realize it, most people won't care. But as that number comes down, it gets easier to peg people as being wired, and the reaction people have (while based on their personal comfort level) is often kinda like when you bump into that guy at the bus stop who looks like Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver (you know... the cammies, the shaved head, the slightly postal look in his eyes): they're cautious.

A face walking up to a security guard and trying to BS their way past him might find him distracted or blase. A face cruising somewhere around 1 point of essence remaining may well send that guard's hackles up a bit, not directly putting any penalties on the test, but definitely changing his stance to something like "cautious" (which carries its own penalty).
ornot
To be honest I have a hard enough time getting players to roleplay their charisma stats and skills, let alone their essence scores. As an example, the charisma 1 Sam insisting that he's a nice guy who fits in everywhere and that people like him.

Fortunately, as most social skills are opposed, it's not tough to work around as a GM. I'll usually have the players roll dice to resolve the mechanics, then engage in a little roleplay basing the final outcome of the encounter on both the rolls and the quality of their roleplaying. Depending on the NPC conspicuous 'ware might play a part.

As for essence loss induced pshychosis, I'm not going to impose it upon someone, although I might bestow extra karma for good RP of that condition. As has been mentioned there are already low essence penalties in place.
ornot
I rather like that system Shrike, although probably a little time consuming to use all the time. I'd also be inclined to round Essence up for the threshold, to make it a little less crippling.
Shrike30
I rounded down just to keep it "working" like Magic and Resonance do, but rounding up work probably be a little kinder to the player/NPC. It only ever really gets rolled when I think someone is going to care about the level of cyber involved.
Schaeffer
I really like the way Critias described the way he handled an increasingly low Essence with his character. After reading some of these posts, it's clear that the best way to illustrate such things is through roleplay -- which is cool. I also agree with Ornot, in that Shrike30's perception-style test looks pretty good.

As to Cynic's question "... why should cybeware make you change anymore than any other factors...?" I don't think the ammount of cyberware installed in a character is the most important factor in a character's personality, I simply wanted to know how others treated the matter of excessive cyberware specifically.

Thanks for the insight folks!

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