<noob>

Perhaps I'm being stupid to ask this, but has anyone ever looked into a pacifist character in Shadowrun?

This might range from someone who tries to only do stun damage, to someone who tries to offer no violence at all. I know this is a philosophy very much out of place in a cyberpunk dystopia, but I thought it might be a good mental exercise.

Or maybe just cannon fodder, I don't know.

</noob>

It'd be an interesting concept, for sure. But you're looking at a number of hurdles, most notably of which is that no one is going to care that you don't kill, they're going to try and kill you regardless.

...pacifism aside, not leaving a high body count behind is still a good practise. Helps keep the Star & other sec agencies off your tail.

I've DM'd pacifist characters on a couple of occasions, both with and without the Pacifist flaw. Works OK for certain types of characters. A Shamanic specialist healer, basically an extreme combat medic, can get away with it, he can be useful enough to the party that it doesn't matter that he can't harm anyone.

It would really depend on how extreme you want to play it. A mage/shaman could take Stunbolt (or, as it's known in our group: Orgasm ) and other non-lethal spells exclusively and anyone else could just take gel rounds.

But if you're the type that doesn't want to cause ANY harm, that's a different story.

A hacker could get away with it too.

SR3 (and SR2 also I think) had the Pacifist Flaw.

IMO not a good character concept unless you really put some thought into it, and the GM runs a campaign that can accomodate you.

Pretty iffy all in all, but yeah, its possible to pull off.

As long as you don't try to enforce your pacifism on the other characters, you can easily do this - just play the Face/Decker/Greaseman.

i don't think pacifism should be an on/off switch. for instance, you could run a Humanis runner who considers himself a pacifist because he doesn't kill humans. you could run an anti-Humanis character of any race who doesn't kill people, but doesn't consider Humanis scum to be people. you could run a PETA extremist who refuses to kill animals, but considers metahumanity fair game. you could run the Pet Professional, who only kills animals. and so on.

Sam Verner is a pacifist runner, IIRC.

Was just going to mention him. He doesn't kill, uses the narcojet guns. He's a dog shaman in the Secrets of Power trilogy. Also shows up in an interview in the Sprawl Survival Guide (IIRC) discussing the very issue.

A pacifist would really depend on the syle of game as well. So ask your GM what they're going for. I;d say for instance that in my games, a acifist wouldn't last a long time. They would last for a little while, but eventually it's kill or be killed. But that doesn't apply for all of my games. Some campaigns have a different feel or type.If your character and the game type mesh, then yeah it could work. Pacifist working with a standard runner team, as long as the have "marketable' skills, yeah that could work. A pacifist in a real gritty street level game is going to havea much harder time. An organized crime game even more so. A group of runners that specialize in wetwork, not likely.

Having PCs run around with Stunball and Narcoject is entirely reasonable. It doesn't work against structures or enclosed vehicles, but it's relatively quiet and doesn't generate a trail of blood or a high body count. There's a lot of places you can go with that - indeed entire teams can be done out in this fashion to quite decent effect.

On the other end of the scale, having an Insect Magician on your team can be quite efficacious as well. He'll kill a substantial (but not amazing) number of people and then he'll go hide the bodies by having them eaten by insect spirits. That's pretty useful too, albeit in the other way where CSI isn't tracking you through the bodies because one of your teammates is hiding the bodies.

Ironically, the guy who has the hardest time finding teams is the stone cold slice-and-dicer. A guy who runs around with a titanium razor who cuts people up and leaves their bodies to rot in the street - that guy leaves what we call "enemies" and also what we in the biz call "clues" - that's bad.

It all depends upon play style. A pacifist character is going to probably have problems with a stone cold slice-and-dicer or an Insect Mage. But that doesn't mean that any of those three characters are "wrong". Really, as long as you know what everyone else is doing and they all know what yu are doing, you can probably make a working Shadowrun team.

---

Interestingly, it is for this reason that I don't find that "pick-up games" of Shadowrun work terribly well. It's not like D&D where you can logically assume that all the players are intent upon breaking into peoples' basements and then stabbing them in the face for money. Some Shadowrunners do that, others do not - so if you throw down a couple of characters sight unseen there's no telling whether the characters can work together or not.

-Frank

I think it really depends on how you want to define it...

By definition, a pacifist is opposed to war/violence. I would say that regardless of lethal/non-lethal combat, its all still violence. So, a character that runs the shadows but just doesn't kill, could be debated on whether that is a pacifist or not.

As to the concept in SR4, I agree with a previous post mentioning a GM-tailored campaign. It can certainly work and I think it would be fun, as you have additional strategy in order to complete objectives without violence.

I don't think it would be as easy if the whole group wasn't of similar mindset...just thinking back to prior games I have run, there's usually always a non-lethal way to deal with the obstacles I have thrown at my players. A group relying on stealth, should always be striving to get in and out without anyone noticing and therefore without violence...I think the difficulty in the pacifist concept is two-fold:

1) When the drek hits the fan, is s/he just going to take the punishment, try to help the group without attacking or what?

2) Motivation...I think this is my biggest sticking point. If one is against violence, why be a shadowrunner? Even if you are not directly the cause of violence, most of the missions and plots have you indirectly causing some sort of violence to someone...so philosophically, it just doesn't seem to blend.

Just adding my 2cents, though we've already plenty

Shadowrunners should never limit themselves to pacifism or not. I think making a character that avoids killing people is professional, better for real roleplaying, and more ethical. However, if you don't blow a hole in the sammys head who is about to kill you, you are just stupid. You should also never limit your professional repertoire. Everyone has to wet work now and again; Its how you deal with it that seperate the boys from men. I think Blackjack summarized it best

What it Means to Murder

My wife and I just started a couple of characters in the Missions arc. Her character could be described as a pacifist, as she does not enter combat by choice and has only Dodge and a minimal Unarmed Combat skill if she has absolutely no choice. She is however, an adept focused on 'Face' skills and has helped every run we have gone on, and increased our profits greatly.

We haven't heard any complaints yet. Of course, no team we have played on has ever suffered from a lack of shooters.

As to motivation: they could be a decker, first and foremost, deckers can be about as removed from actual combat as you can get. They could be attached to a member of the group, unable or unwilling to leave their side. Hell, they could just be the uber-medic, completely self-sacrificing in giving aid, though that's a bit of a stretch.

...maybe a new Flaw/Quality, (Similar to and old Champions/Hero System Disadvantage)

Personal Code Against Killing. Mental -1 (SR2/3) -5 (SR4)
Character avoids killing and always uses non lethal means to deal with opponents (stun spells, stun weapons/ammo, etc).

Just a thought.

My Opinion:

If I were to play a pacifist character in SR, I would define pacifism as the desire to do no harm. This doesn't eliminate the right to self defense, but if someone does attack me and I drop em, I'm not gonna put a round into their braincase. In all probability, I would stabilize them if there was time at all. Only doing non-lethal seems like a bit of a copout. After all, pummeling multiple people into unconsciousness with your bare fists is not typically a sign of pacifism. It's not the mechanics that would make someone a pacifist. It's the roleplaying.

Again, just how I'd play it. Not necessarily the right or only way, just mine.

*EDIT*

For guidance, I think taking a look at the pacifism codes from GURPS might be a good idea. They had total non-violence, self defense, and no killing as three separate tiers IIRC.

You can have a criminal who doesn't kill but still goes on runs. Think of the whitehats, or even the grey hats. To use a comic book example, think of Spiderman and the Black Cat versus the Punisher. Spiderman is a good guy, who while he doesn't kill he beats up the bad guys and then hands them to the police or what not. The Black Cat is a professional thief, and I don't believe they've ever killed anyone. However, the Punisher was going out of his way to kill people. And I think you could see all on a Shadowrun team.

Basically, high stealth, decent unarmed or even melee combat skills, things like that and you can make a pacifistic character.

Hmm, interesting character concept approaching...

(psuedo) Buddhist phyical adept. Combat oriented powers. Pacifist to a point.

"The Buddha will forgive you three times." The character does not take action to being struck the first three times. After the third time, the Buddha will no longer forgive, he initiates all stat buffs and powers and annihilates any opposition.

Most likely very short lived (esp when the first strike is from, say, an assault cannon), but interesting nonetheless.

Side note-watch the anime "Flame of Recca" to see this concept in action, it's a good fight.

Which part/character of Flame of Recca? Its been a while.

Also, Ive tried to do the Buddist mage, but as someone who respects the philosophies of the Buddha, I cannot bring myself to degrade it by classifying it within the rules of Shadowrun. I guess I just dont see it as being equal with the other traditions as I believe that someone who seeks to understand the universe as it is would also develope magical power much quicker and channel it more effectively, all of which unbalance the concept, and so it stays just that.

how would you cope with a ex-military assassin who only kill officers? i am only asking because i am a new GM with no prior experience and i think only one of my players has played pen and paper RPG's before.

Well I suppose it all depends on how dark your DM imagines Shadowrun as being. For example allot of people will talk about how not killing people will make the Megas go easier on you if/when you are caught, ect... Well I disagree, let me explain the way I see things as working...

Life is cheap unless you've got the coin to back it up. If a group of runners sucessfuly hit a corp, the exec in charge doesn't care whether they used gel rounds or simply geeked every Joe Blow Sec-guard they ran into. In fact, if they killed a bunch of losers who appearently couldn't do the job they were hired to do in the first place then the runners actually saved him from firing them for failing in the first place. After all, there is always ten other poor slots begging for a chance to raise themsevles off of the streets and land corp employment. (Little do they realize that even if they do land a job all they can ever hope to manage is to trade thier freedom for a massive debt as the corps take full advatage of the old coal miners and share farmers 'company store' policies and their families will be forced to settle after their own death, even if it means a one-way trip to the organ bank or research lab.)

No, what the exec is primarily worried about is whether or not his hoop is in any real danger and his actions will be based off of that. Does it seem likely that tracking the runners down in hopes of recovering the loot will cost the corp less then simply writing off whatever they stole? Did they geek anyone that either the exec knows personally or might actually be considered of value to the corp? Is he pissed off that the runners most likely have cost him a promotion and his yearly bonus?

As for geeking citizens on the streets, once again it depends on who they geek and whether the Corp being paid to play cop thinks that it is a worthy investment to respond and actually try to catch those responcible instead of the first Sinless scum they lay hands on.

Now don't think for a minute that the Sinless and the poor are any better then the heartless bastards that run things, no, if given half a chance they would knife your eight-year-old daughter for her coat and that soy-dog she was eating, and then feed her corpse to the nearest Ghoul pack in exchange for a promise to leave their squat alone. (And that is assuming that they don't decide to 'have a little fun with her' first.)

So no, in my Shadowrun campaigns pacifist characters can try and strive for their ideals, but the very depts which meta-humanity itself has fallen conspires to defeat them at every turn, because the restraint that the pacifist shows is seen as weakness to be exploited.

I think a pacifist character can work well in Shadowrun and be a very successful runner, too. The issue would be one of working with teammates. I am, I suppose, a real life pacifist, now. I believe in non-violence on both logical and religious grounds. I don't think any realistic pacifist character would take a view of "it's okay if my teammates kill someone, just so long as I don't." This would still be a violation of any but the most hypocritical pacifist's morality.

My take on the setting is also a dark one, but I disagree with Ravor's negation of any positive gain from not murdering people. I think Lone Star would take a different approach to a group of individuals that slaughtered people to those that left them quietly nacrojetted. So would the families and loved ones of those who were left mostly unharmed. I also don't see most corps employing any old person for guard duty. The big corps maintain private armies and the skill and loyalty of a soldier is not something built up overnight or without investment. If such a person is killed, it's a big financial cost to the corporation, whilst the one who gets narcojetted might get a disciplinary or lose a promotion, but I'm sure the corp is still glad to have them. It's their manager / officer who will most likely get the severe dressing down or suspension.

So I reckon a pacifist character can be successful. They might even be more successful if they don't have to put 40BP into the firearms skill group. But the problems are going to be integrating with non-pacifist players and for the GM to find ethical runs for them to go on. I think only the first one is a genuine obstacle, though.

I'm not a pacifist. Frankly, I don't understand the logic behind it. However, I do think a pacifist character is playable in SR. And, no offense, Ravor, but I couldn't disagree more with your view of the SR world. Sure, corps are manipulative bastards, and they promote the most power hungry amongst them, but that doesn't mean that there aren't human beings in them. I think the biggest departure from your worldview that I have is the level of dystopia. I don't think people are inherently good, but I don't think they're inherently evil either. I think desperation can make people do deplorable things, and lust for power can twist humans into almost unrecognizable parodies of what they once were. But I guess I don't see the SR world as a vassal state, where corps pay people a pittance for their services/loyalties. After all, consumer goods are a huge market, and without people getting enough money to play with, the whole market collapses. People aren't THAT desperate. After all, the cost of giving up your freedom has to be somewhat attractive, or else everyone would be a shadowrunner. I dunno. Plus, purely from a logical standpoint, even from your point of view, if you whack some random sec guard, there's a chance that he has a wife that uses the life insurance to put out a contract on you. Killing folks(especially relative innocents and civilians) makes waves, and runners try to be as unobtrusive as possible. If someone wants to run a campaign where they just blow the shit out of everyone they encounter on a run, more power to em.

I dunno. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I agree with you in principle, Ravor, just not to the extent. Even assuming that Lonestar doesn't really care that you're killing folks in the streets, the good citizens of seattle are gonna freak out and demand arrests if you engage in a running gun battle through the middle of downtown. And there will be people on the force(probably lower down, before all the idealism has been squeezed out of em) who genuinely care that people have died, and will try to stop it, because not only is it technically their job, but because they're morally opposed to murder. The key to being a successful shadowrunner is being unobtrusive, in my mind. Mass murder generally doesn't accomplish that goal.

I run my games with a good focus. I don't require players to be good, but I make sure that there is hope in my game. The point of the dark setting for me, is to make the lights shine a little brighter. Really, good and evil are based on what is actually good for the community and what is actually bad for the community. Good is logically supportable with the assumption that the community matters. And if the community doesn't matter to you and you are content to live in a despair filled warzone, then I don't see that character has much intelligence or longterm thinking coupled with that self-interest. So I see characters who try to be good as more interesting than those who do not, because the good ones are the ones that are taking on a challenge to change things.

As to this:

Street Magic, page 36.

[edit] The idea of magic being different for everyone and based on their perception has been around since SR's inception, as noted by the quip:
How does Magic work?
Ask ten different magicians and you'll get twelve different answers. [/edit]

if belief shapes magic, then it doesn't matter what you believe--only with how much conviction you believe it. the fact that a buddhist believes it's all illusions has no impact on how powerful his magic is, only on how his magic expresses itself. even if we accept that belief shapes magic, it doesn't necessarily follow that the right belief makes one's personal magic stronger. this is backed up by the fact that Buddhism in SR is no more powerful than any other magical tradition.

i don't necessarily think that just because one believes something hard enough, magic will conform to that belief. however, i think that belief can definitely shape one's personal magic. someone who believes that no one else is trustworthy, that it's not worth helping people because they'll always fail you--that person's never going to be a Dog shaman. a Christian isn't going to Awaken as a wujen mystic. how do i know this? because, in SR, there are many, many examples of people Awakening into a tradition that closely matches their personal beliefs. the Order of St. Augustine would have trouble filling its ranks if people Awakened into random traditions. the only belief-Awakening discrepancy i've ever heard of is some native americans who Awaken as hermetics. that can easily be ascribed to centuries' worth of exposure to western thought.

Just had to throw in my two nuyens worth.

We do have a shaman who doesn't like to kill so he gave the character all spells that wont kill ( stun bolt,mind control, control emotions ect.). This really all depends on who you are playing with as well. He tends to get a lot of shit from the combat monsters of our group every time he busts out the healer/medic shaman. The chars still a criminal according to one group member because the char runs a under ground clinic for the poor. So I don't know its doable but finding reasons not to lecture the group in game about how it wasn't necessary to unload 27 clips into one sammy can be hard at time. Still a fun character to have in the group though.

My technomancer is a non-combatant. The most lethal he's gone is using drones to shoot spirits. He can deal with that though, because like the trid games they just evaporate when shot. Up until the last session he has succeeded at avoiding ever being near any violence.

During the last session our face uplinked a surveilance he was running where a runner team blasted its way through a baricade, and then burned one of their fallen chummers. Characters reaction was throwing up over the side of the truck.

Then we get to a crash sight of a private plane where the face and doc perform disection upon the pilot to get his internal comm, and any necessary pieces and then light the body on fire. I missed out on this, because I was directing centipedes and dragonfly drones at dismantling the plane searching for our payload.

And the last part where I am left with the unconcious mage (at this point unconcious due to astral combat not due to astral projection), while the other two members go after the other runner team. Via surveilance drone I watch as a Guardian spirit grapples the throwing adept, and the rival mage binds the face, while their rigger just lays into him with the taser... Since this is all happening a km or so away from where I am, I grab rations and water and one of the adept throwers extra hoverboards and take off (I don't have time or means to transport the mage, besides they know there's a mage with the team). We're in the middle of nowhere in africa right now, nearest city is more than 150 km away, all my combat drones had to be left in Seattle, and this other team locked down all their wireless communications (they knew we were coming after the mage battle of course, entering a mage battle without a mage was a bad idea, hindsight tells us that, but the face was metagaming and was going on the session was only to last another hour or so, and before we were planning on switching to something else next session...). So watching was the best I could do to help them.

The kids naive, and has avoided these occurences fairly well thus far... Once I get some distance he's going to work at tracking his team and if circumstances present themselves.. hopefully get them out.

Pacifism is, IMO, almost impossible as a runner, even Robin Hood, do-goody-two-shoes, wasn't a pacifist...
But not killing is perfectly possible and does make you a low priority target over the killing-spree teams...
In our current group, I think a total of 4 people died because of us...
I'm Face/Medic and I usually take a few second to make sure everyone is down, but not dead...
However, a pacifist would look for non-violent solutions, which is nearly impossible (nearly, not totally) in today's (2070) world...

Pacifism in SR is entirely possible if your job and environment allow it. Technically, narcojet and gel rounds aren't pacifistic, they're just non-lethal unless you use them solely in self-defense (and even then I find that questionable because, as a pacifist, you should never have put yourself in a situation where you needed them). If you have the ability to "ghost" your way past enemies to reach your goal... it's do-able. Also, non-striking martial arts like judo would work. It's hard but do-able.

Complete pacifism would be fairly challenging. Now, non-lethal? Technically, that's the way you want to run. Playing folks who don't mind fighting, but don't like to kill, is almost EASIER than playing killers from a technical standpoint(there are tons of melee and ranged ways to hurt without killing. And remember, the stun damage bar is shorter most of the time.) In fact, the way armor vs. damage works these days, you have to practically freaking go out of your way to kill people.

But yeah; someone who is under the terms of the old SR3 Pacifist and especially Total Pacifist would be a challenge. Total Pacifists, if I recall, don't even like to harm insects, let alone people. Pacifists tried to choose the non violent method, but would fight as a very last resort(and then they'd try to do it non-lethally.)

While it may be the nice way to fight, it is far from pacifist...

Wow, makes me feel like a weird gamemaster to hear everyone act as if killing is always part of the game. In my current Shadowrun game (we just started it about two months ago) they've gone on several runs and only one run were they actually expected to kill anyone. In fact, they have been given bonuses for not killing people as it sort of hits the radar a bit higher when fatalities start occurring.

A pacifist character would be a real challenge. I'd actually question on why such a character would pick Shadowrunning as an occupational choice, especially since there are better occupations that would never challenge his beliefs.

Kill 'em all! Take their stuff!

Stun them all, take their stuff, sell them to the Ghouls as "Fresh Meat on the Hoof".

Wow you guys are morbid

I'm a GM for Paranoia and Deadlands. I leave it at that.

The group will be happy if I DON'T start porting things from those games into Shadowrun!

Dude! Ghouls eat dead meat! They don't need fresh anything, as they are just as happy digging up a week-old grave. Just kill them in the first place. You can still sell them off, but you save yourself the trouble of dealing with a living package, and the added expense of stun rounds.

But the enjoyment and look on their faces when they realize they're being sold to Ghouls is more than worth the price!

Wow, we are morbid!