Some characters are more than just part of history, they are legends. And just like many legends, they are not propelled to the top, but instead worked their way up slowly. As a character becomes more and more legendary, his aura becomes more and more powerful to the eyes of the awakened, and many powers emerge from this, even if the legendary character is only a mundane.

When a character earns his first point of public awareness, he may choose one legend power. He may choose new legend powers as his public awareness goes up by additional points.

Legend Power:

- Skill mastery: the character's abilities are becoming legendary. By selecting this power, one of the character's skill maximum rating increases by one (from 6 to 7 for example) He must pay the karma cost to actually increase the skill. This power may be taken more than once for a single skill, increasing the maximum by another point. He may also select a new skill everytime his public awareness goes up.

-Legendary item: one of the character's personal item is so closely linked to his aura it begins to form an astral form for itself. The item becomes magical in nature and grants a +1 bonus for every skill check made with it. It doesn't grant the ability to overcome a creature immunity to normal weapons, though, as the item is not a weapon focus. (though it could be enchanted to be one later one, in which case the bonuses stack) The power may be taken more than once for a single item of for several different items.


COmment?

seems too early, imo.

particularly considering a character with the right flaws could start off with it.

you aren't even generally known of in the shadows even until 3+

we also know that at 10+ normal people know about you and your 'legendary exploits'.

now, i don't know that it should be 10, either... but maybe closer to 4 or 5 would be more appropriate, imo.

Public awareness is supposed to be a bad thing...

Why do you get power if you sacrifice people on an altar and use their blood to bolster your spells.

Public Awareness is how you are perceived by people. You are getting better and better because your aura is getting more powerful as more people gives you importance. It doesn't matter if you are a sociopath killing people on the street or the reknown cop running after him, you are both considered legendary by the common people.

Remind me never to mess with Brittney Spears. She must have unarmed combat and pistols skills of 12 or so by now.

I dunno. I don't think it's all that bad of an idea. I just don't think it should be linked to public awareness when a player's goal should be to keep that low. They are SHADOWrunners after all.

Maybe it should be linked to total karma instead. So after 10 karma you get a legandary point, then another after 30 karma, and another after 70 karma, etc (or whatever interval you want).

Okay, in all seriousness, I agree with ShadowDragon that it shouldn't be linked to Public Awareness. I understand the rationale, which is that if people's collective beliefs can create things like Mentor Spirits, then they could empower those they see as celebrities. But the problem is that if it works for shadowrunners, it should also work for other celebrities - in fact, megacorporations would strive to turn their most promising assets into media darlings, with trid documentaries about them, sims of their exploits, and so on, so that they would become "legends", and thus more powerful.


My other problem is how "Legend Powers" wreak havok with SR4's hard caps. A skill of 6 is considered "best of the best", and a skill of 7 is considered "legendary" - Albert Einstein, Babe Ruth, etc. I think if a character starts becoming famous, it should be reflected by the GM allowing him/her to buy extra positive qualities post char-gen.

And more than raw numbers, it should reflect the character actually doing something legend-worthy, such as killing Lord Torgo or rescuing the mayor's daughter from a thrill-killer cult. A high Public Awareness may reflect someone who starts out with three mild allergies, three incompetencies, and scorched for negative qualities, then accumulates karma (mainly for surviving) and notoriety (for acts of cowardice or stupidity) at a steady rate.

just a note, this doesn't automatically make celebrities more powerful. it simply means they have the potential to be more powerful.

note that you must still buy those higher skill levels with karma, they just become available to you now.

and personally, i was gonna say it was more along the lines of earthdawn (within my admittedly extremely limited knowledge of the game), except that instead of uncovering legends and such about things and binding it to yourself, you're creating the legends.

that being said, street cred would probably be my personal method of reflecting this, not so much public awareness.

For a House Rule, this is actually pretty interesting. Tying in with Public Awareness will reward the runner to actually accumulate Street Cred and not go out and slaughter a few innocents to get Notoriety in order to burn Street Cred and reduce Public Awareness.

I like it... for a House Rule.

Hmmm... I can't say I see it as a good thing. Seems like an attempt to inject 'epix' into SR, which it really doesn't need.

While I don't go out of my way to kill characters, I see no reason why they should reach the kind of levels of karma some people suggest. Running is a dangerous business. One day it will either kill the character, or the character gets enough stashed aside to retire (or at least drop out of the runner biz as an active participant).

What is epix?

Just an attempt to exemplify the mad rush for high power that may be seen in some games. I have seen purple items in World of Warcraft described as 'epix', and high level DnD characters are described as epic...

I could go on, but your question strikes me as deliberately obtuse.

I apologise if it was meant in good faith, but I've had a bad day, and am inclined to be bitchy.