so, there are two possibilities, here.

a) they wrote an edge, they put the cost for that edge in the table, and then they appended "example" to the edge's notation in that table with the intention that people would read it and say "oh, it's only an example, i shouldn't use it". and despite the fact that the edge was never meant to be used, they never said anything about not using it--matter of fact, they presented it as a balanced example for players and GMs to base their own custom edges off of.

b) they noted that as an example so that you'd know where to find it--so you wouldn't be digging through the edge/flaw list, trying to find it.

i mean, seriously. one of these possibilities makes sense, and one of these possibilities has a bad case of logic-weasels. i don't want to bias anyone as to which is which, but a) is the crazy one.

Crazy... LIKE A FOX! Anyway, reading through, like I said, I thought it was an example of how players can push over their GMs, since it's pretty clearly not especially well balanced compared to the other social edges. So yeah, I guess we're agreed, A is the right one.

Superman can leap tall buildings in a single bound, but even he'd find leaping to that particular conclusion to be a challenge. there's nothing in the text to indicate, anywhere, that the edge isn't intended to be used. the only supporting evidence is the opinion that the edge is too powerful. opinions are not generally what one depends on when one is deciding what the official rules are, especially when there's an alternative that is not based on opinion.

i don't guess it matters much whether it's an official rule or not, so i'm going to let it drop. but not without stating, for the record, that your line of reasoning is seriously not a line at all.

Which aren't as effective as lethal damage.

My main problem with people who play pacifist runners is they use it as an excuse to be jerks. They tend to try to force their views on people and in one case snitched to LS on the team for "murdering" the gangers who had attacked us. People tend to play pacifists as they play paladins in dnd.

One of the reasons that whenever I finally get to play instead of DMing, I make sure to arrange for suitable 'accidents' to befall any 'would-be' Paladins in my team...

Phobias, incompetance, and allergies are hard. They are good for background info, but yeah, some are kinda hokey. I have a really bad allergy and I avoid said object like the plague. There are things that hard as I try I honestly suck at, and I tend to avoid those things as well, because I don't like the frustration they bring me. I have a friend who freaks out at the sight of clowns, and a very funny story about the Halloween I found out.

I think they make good flaws if you watch out what is chosen. I for some reason atm am having a hard time express my thoughts so I'll try later.

Combining Phobia: Blowjobs with Intolerance: Whores and Day Job: Pimp can lead to a lot of laughs, particularly when the character also has Pimp Slap as a specialization of Unarmed Combat.

The phobia is both realistic (teeth!) and is extremely hindering due to his Day Job. His intollerance may also harm his Day Job, particularly when combined with his phobia, but it also provides an excuse to say "Pimp Slap" alot.

Also, Phobia:Ninjas with Intolerance: Japanese, Flashbacks:Pearl Harbor (bad BTL experience), and Jap Slap as an Unarmed Combat specialization provides a level of hypocrisy that makes very interesting roleplaying, with the character constantly berating Ninjas and Japanese people in general for staging sneak attacks while he himself specializes in making sneak attacks and blatantly refers to his sneak attacks as "Jap Slaps" with a bizarre measure of pride.


It is possible to make a suite of edges and flaws that compliment each otehr and make the character much more interesting.

I have had pacifist characters before, without any problems. The trick is to make the character come to terms with the fact that he is dealing with criminals who will, either on occasion or constantly (depending on the group) kill people. There might be song "growing pains" as the character acclamates to the group, but eventually the character should be willing to accept the face that he can't stop the killing. All he can do is refuse to actively kill himself, using whatever Stun options he has available.

TOTAL pacifists, on the other hand, I don't get. I have never had a player ask to be one, mercifully. Honestly, if you're a total pacifist, what are you doing running around with (presumably) hardened criminals??

...there's also neurostun grenades too.

My favourite was to pack an Ares Squirt loaded with a Gamma-S/DMSO cocktail. 10D stun w/instant effect & it softens them up for questioning later.

As a GM, I think that I actually care less about the pure-stats flaws, such as Aptitude and Incompetence, than I do about the ones that are manifested almost entirely in role playing, like Hung Out To Dry or Dark Secret.

Why?

Because as the GM it's hard enough to write up the session in time every week. I really don't need to be forced to write in six extra subplots for six characters who all decided to cash in with Dark Secret. It's obnoxious because it's a way the character gets to force his or her backstory into every session and what's worse is that the onus of making the flaw hurt falls on the GM. If the GM is tired or just wants to focus on something else for a while the PC is getting a free ride.

Conversely, as a player, I would almost always pick Hung Out To Dry. My automatic contact picks were always Street Doc and Fixer. Most likely multiple other people on the team also have that as their autopicks. So, instead of getting a third or fourth redudant contact pair just cash in with the extra points. In my experience as a player the GMs NEVER bother to even make this a big deal in terms of role play. Every single GM I've ever played with has treated this as trading 2 level 1 contacts for extra points. See my above paragraph.

Stun Damage is all well and good until someone pulls out the hundred-pack of high-rating stimpatches.
The fact is that stun damage is easily negated for everyone except magicians and adepts. All one really needs is an auto-injector and a biomoniter to have the equivalent of a second stun track (or a third). Trauma Dampeners make this even more broken, reducing all stun damage taken by 1 and keeping people conscious that much longer. You could even add in a bioware chemical gland so you don't have to worry about getting refills for the auto-injectors.

Just remember, a Pulsar is Semi auto. Cant really stim patch your self if your over flowed well into physical.

And then we're back around to an expensive, short-range weapon that, while powerful, doesn't do Pacifists much good.

~J

plus, like hyz said--auto-injector. hook it up to a biomonitor, have it hit you every time you take stun damage. kinda a neat idea, actually.

I've only had two pacifists I can recall, and one 'cheap' food allergy.

The food allergy was a mild allergy to meat products (soy-based were usually okay) for my elf decker/face. I saw the idea that elves couldn't digest meat properly on Blackjack's page, and it amused me, so I gave it to her. I only gave it a -1 value, and then just because she tended to have meets in classy places where you would actually get real food.

The two pacifists were a shaman and an adept (both had the lesser version, not Total). The shaman was just opposed to killing on principle (and due to her initiate group's strictures), and her magic was instead focused on illusion, stealth, and healing. She tended to join the decker in hiding behind something when people started shooting.

The adept, on the other hand, didn't actually have any moral opposition to killing, but she was pretty much a newbie to running (she was about 19) and as such, really didn't have the guts to kill anyone. She wound up having a handful of social powers, a lot of unarmed dice, but no killing hands.

pacifism should not be SOP. SR is a dark, violent world. senseless violence is the norm, not the exception. going through a facility and stunning everyone, instead of killing them, will get you noticed because it's so unusual. yes, if you get caught, you might end up getting off with a lighter sentence--but you'll be more likely to get caught, because of your distinctive MO, plus the fact that living witnesses will have a better time providing info than dead ones. and the lighter sentence thing--that's assuming that the guys who catch you are interested in justice and the law, which is not the case a large part of the time.

as for escalation--again, SR is a dark, violent world. the guards are not going to say "oh, they're using squirts, we should be nice and use our tasers," they're going to slap a stimpatch on their buddy and shoot you in the face with real bullets, because that is their job. they're probably not even equipped with stun weapons at any location worth hitting.

maybe these things are not true in your games, but they're true in almost every game i've seen run.

I'm pretty sure the first thing a security guard is going to think when they see a Runner using stun rounds is going to be from the following list:

"They're looking for hostages."
"They're looking for people to mindrape."
"They're looking for ritual sacrifices."
"They're looking for people to torture for information."
"They're suckers! Let's kill them quick and claim our bonus check."

~J

By less heat I don't mean lighter sentences, I mean you won't be a priority for groups like LS, which means they're less likely to hunt you down in the first place. And avoiding security mean exactly that, avoiding, not running through a facility stunning everyone. As for corps, espionage is a part of everyday business and there's little point going after a team since they'll have passed on the package by the time you find them and they probably don't know anything anyway. Having to rehire and retrain your entire security staff every time there's an security breach is just plain annoying though, not to mention the costs of payouts to the families of the deceased.

And seriously, I like to think of SR being a lot more grey than something like DnD. Saying "Killing these guys is okay, besause it's the the norm and it's dark and violent" isn't any different to saying "Killing these guys is okay, because I cast 'Know Allignment' and they're Evil". As you said, it's a personal preference thing, and unless things like racism, domestic violence and drug use factor heavily in your campaigns, I prefer my SR to not be futuristic hack and slash.

In the Sixth World, life is cheap. Most aren't even worth the price of a bullet wageslaves are more expendable than the goods that they produce. The fact is that many people play it so that theft is, in fact, a more serious crime than murder even if the law says otherwise. Murder doesn't really become more than petty vandalism until you kill someone important or someone loved by someone important. The cogs in the machine are always replaceable.

Morality and consequences are separate things and should always be separate. I think we'd all agree that there should be no legal consequences for slitting the throat of a five-year-old barrens street-whore because you don't want to pay her two nuyen for a rather mediocre blowjob, but I doubt that anyone except for an egoist would assert that there is anything remotely moral about it.

Avoiding security is very difficult and complex. It's worth doing while going into a run, but to sneak your way back out is almost always more trouble than it's worth—shooting your way out will keep your enemy unbalanced most of the time and generally have better results.

Put it this way. You've stolen the package. You're in the office building. What's easier, hiding until midnight, then BASE jumping off the side of the building, making sure to clear the fence, and getting out that way, or just shooting everyone in the lobby on your way out and being gone within two minutes?

Please take that situation as representative. I'm a little tired to be constructing The Perfect Situation, and you should get my idea anyway, hopefully.

~J

For starters, I didn't say Pacifism should absolutely be SOP, I said IF ANYTHING that was a better reason for disallowing the flaw than 'it cripples your character'. It doesn't, yes, your exit will be more difficult but it's a flaw, it's meant to makes thing more difficult.

As for the setting remarks, it's not about morality and consequences, it's a matter of context and consistency. You DO NOT get to kill half a dozen or so fathers, husbands, brothers or sons who were only trying to support their family and shake it off under the argument 'life is cheap' or 'the setting is dark and violent' then ask the GM to stop describing how your next door neighbour or another PC is beating his kids again because it makes you 'uncomfortable'. Like I said, if you play with domestic violence, drugs etc because your campaigns really are that dark, great, more power to you. But if you don't, and the people I play with wouldn't for the most part, and I honestly think your average player is the same, then to maintain consistency, life isn't quite so cheap as it might otherwise be.

And besides, as a DM, if I don't make my players uncomfortable with the facts of life in the dark and broken world that is Shadowrun that to their characters is just the way things are and isn't worth getting upset over then I'm just not doing the genre justice.

It's absolutely true, for me. Once again, I prefer SR to be a more consistent shade of grey, regardless of how dark that shade may be. Killing or not killing doesn't make a game hack and slash, you're right there, but the lack of moral conflict between 'the dungeon crawl' or 'facility breach' and the rest of the setting DOES.

EDIT
@Ravor
That is exactly my point... sort of.

again, that's not necessarily true. you can run a very complex, very character-driven campaign in which the characters use normal RPG levels of violence to achieve their goals, and never touch on uncomfortable subjects.

consistency is a fine thing. i prefer it, myself. but if it will detract from a game, then it doesn't belong in that game. that doesn't necessarily make the game hack and slash.

I never said anything about not using grenades when grenades are called for. The point I was trying to make and looking back at my post did so poorly, was what's going to bring more "looks" at your character walking down the street, into a bar, or fending off gangers with a heavy pistol or a grenade pistol? That was the point I was trying to make against the grenade pistol.

I am all for using whatever works the best, but as was already posted lethal measures seem more better most of the time. Less witnesses, harder to heal, etc.

The killing/not killing dilemma in SR has always been pretty interesting in our games. We had one character, a big game hunter played by my friend, who hunted awakened critters often, but never, in the entire time, of a year and a half long game, killed one character.

I can see the arguments for and against. A little more for, but some against definately. And i don't mean pacifist, i just mean using stunning methods when at all possible. (I believe pacifists wont even kill critters, or choose not too. Total wont even want to HARM anything, let alone kill it, if i recall the flaws correctly.)

For: Leave less people wanting revenge. If you kill a bunch of guards, thats a possible bunch of family members/friends/close mates/etc that might want revenge on you. Stun them and its less likely.

However, stunning a bunch of guards leaves a bunch of guards that MAYBE know what you look like and can grab you. However, as mentioned the corp might want to keep the whole thing quiet, making it not so bad.

Even on a rare basis, leaving the living can indeed cause you problems in another unmentioned way; guards who are knocked out when the stuff is grabbed are labeled as incompitent stooges and either A. Fired(more than likely) or even rarely, B. Killed anyway(for a hardass, uber evil corp). In B's case, its no longer the groups problem. In A's case, however, said guards might try to find them again later. Keep in mind these scenarios are probably a bit rarer in general.

Problem is sometimes with the Pacifist flaws is how they are portrayed. While Pacifist indeed is workable, most Total Pacifist characters are portrayed as fanatics who push their beliefs on the entire damn team. I, personally, am borderline total pacifist IRL, the only thing keeping me at the line is the fact i like meat and smash certain bugs on sight. BUT, i dont go forcing others there. I don't see why a Face/Social/Info gatherer type team member can't be on a team and do their thing when necessary, they dont HAVE to actually be in the building when it all goes down...and they dont HAVE to force the rest of the team into their viewpoint, either. Total Pacifists are like ninja characters, they CAN be done well, but it's damned rare. This is why i typically, as a GM, worry if i see this flaw, because 9 out of every 10 are the equivalent of televangelists.

And as for flaws having to change how a GM runs a game...it doesnt have to be so. A Flaw is usually considered a free ride if it doesnt come up every damn session. It doesn't have to be this way. It could simply come up at inoppurtune times during certain sessions. They sure wont be free rides, but at the same time they won't get in the GM's way of a story. If a character is allergic to Soy, it sort of naturally comes up every week and every time they have to pay extra for lifestyle or go out of their way to find a place with real food for a meet. A GM need not make every bad guy switch his bullets for Platinum for a character with a Platinum allergy, one corp boss could have an obsession with platinum plated things(hey, those bosses can be eccentric), certain ware might have to cost a lot more to get the platinum parts replaced with something similar, the characters girlfriend/boyfriend might love platnium, certain corp workers have dogtags plated with platinum the PCs must wear)...but it need not come up every session to be a flaw.

EDIT: And of course, kind of going along with the top, i still think the worst kind are those that when they DO come up, it typically results in the death of a character/team. Those are the ones i find that end up as free rides more often.

I don't remember this being mentioned yet, oddly enough, but I really hate the vindictive flaw. I honestly see no reason that it should be in the game. It's an excuse to be an asshole (at best) and go around killing people (the usual). There is no way in my mind anyone with that flaw would have survived into adulthood. They would have mouthed off to or attacked the wrong person and would have been left dead in a gutter somewhere.

EDIT

Heh, should have been more specific and said it COULD happen...but not that it WILL. But, IMO, it's a possibility...i think a big part of it(vengance) has to do with how careful or sloppy the PCs are. If the PCs don't bother with watching out for security cameras, etc, or disguising themselves well, they have a bigger chance of being caught(by everyone involved). In which case it turns into the ''pcs were a bit dumb and have it coming.'' Or the families and people involved were a bit higher on the power scale and can afford such things.

But no, not every single family member is going to try to seek revenge. But keeping the IDEA on the table can help the players keep a bit of that paranoia about them, IMO.

even mages don't have that much of a problem with them. if you keep the rating of your stimpatch low, say around 4, you've got a very low chance of ever failing the test that makes you roll for magic loss.