You can get a martial art from 6 (starting character) to a 10 inside...what...50 karma? I don't have my SR3 on me right now, but I think it's 1.5 an active skill to increase it, right? So 10 karma for a 7 skill, 12 for an 8, 13 for a 9, etc?

6-8 decent Shadowruns worth of karma, then, and anyone that really wants to can be better at it than my ~250 karma, well rounded, character (the one in question) at unarmed combat. Failing that, a starting Adept that's specialized enough still has about even odds (and it's not like Adepts are all that rare, especially in the latter days of SR3 after all the cool SotA '64 stuff). Failing a 50ish karma ultra-specialist, or even just a starting Adept ultra specialist? All it takes is multiple baddies to start stacking up Friends in Melee and bend my Wildcat score right over (hence Carromelleg as a back up).

But, I figure, why push my luck? There's always someone better than you.

Enforcing realistic skill advancement rates would mean that players would need to participate in many a game session before earning any meaningful character progression.

Sometimes sacrifices in believability must be made.

Which wouldn't be as much of a problem if characters could start with a plausible array of skills.

-Siege

It's also a statement of his character that he doesn't need to ego-stroke of beating a drunk bar patron to death just because he can.

The other factor for skill increases, other than Karma is the skill roll and time it takes. You have to make a Skill roll of x2 the desired skill rating, and each attempt takes that number of weeks.

To go from 6 to 7 in Unarmed, you have to make an Unarmed roll (6 dice), Tgt 14, and take 7 weeks making the attempt. You can add a few dice with an Instructor, but not that many (tgt 4, 1 extra dice per 2 succ). Getting from 7 to 8 takes a Tgt 16, etc.

So the last one, getting to Unarmed 10 would take a roll of 20, take 10 weeks each try. I don't know about you guys, but I see a roll of 20+ maybe 2-3 times in the whole year and a half we've played. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it could easily take a character a year of game-time (and that much lifestyle) to hit 10, and all that time, the runner isn't out there doing jobs and/or building any kind of rep or street cred.

Ed, can I just say thank you for sharing Captain Clueless with us. I mean your Profalactic Pal pulls the sort of stuff I haven't seen in like 15 years. There are times I miss that stupidity just for the beat down. Of course they are frustrating as hell to play against but looking back or hearing about them from someone else they are damn funny!

He wants to look distinctive? Great. Let him. and when his picture is shown on the trid as a suspect? I mean an "artist's sketch" of any old troll are going to look alike but Captain Condom there is going to stick out like a sore thumb. I mean geez everyone will be dropping a dime of him. Maybe when the cleaning lady in a coffin motel says "Weren't you the guy on the News last night?" he might get a clue. If not. just accept he'll be spending lots of time creating new characters.

If he hsoots off his mouth, then if someone might believe him and call in the heavy guns. In reality 2 lone star beat cops could take him down, but he starts boasting of his "great" :noob:skill and he might find a Lonestar FRT coming htrough the door, redecorating the room with his innards before you can say "Want fries with that?"

As for skill levels, remember shadowrunners are supposed to be better than average joes. Sure unarmed 4 is much better than the check-out kid at Stuffershack but for people who fight regularly, gangers, cops, sec guards etc it is just better than average. If he wants to pick a fight with a crossing guard, yeah unarmed combat 4 will mop up the street. Try it with a member of the ancients and he is going to have a fight. Try it on a serious first or even second line shadowrunner and he's going to be out classed.

Snow Fox, what, exactly, does that post you made refer to?

*blinks*

Wow.

Troll !!

So does anyone else think of draggin' a roped up Troll behind a boat while chummin' for a Megalodon when they read the word "Trolling"?

"We're gonna need a bigger boat."

Um ... no!

I'd call that player a waste of sperm and air...

(Edit: Meant to refer to the complete and total moron-king who thought Distinctive Style, Hunted, and a Day Job was a good combination. If you're going to try to munchkin, at least do it right, like taking Allergy Uncommon & Mod: Plutonium.)

That pun was worth about an 18M Stun. My head is reeling from it.

In the book, the examples are just that - examples, not an exhaustive list. By disallowing any allergies or phobias besides the one's listed, you're clearly using a house rule.

As to your example about the player wanting to take orichalcum as an Allergy, the listed examples are there to help you as the GM decide whether the Allergy should be Common, Uncommon, or so rare they shouldn't get points for it.

Still, your house rule does avoid having to actually decide anything or risk the chance of diagreement with your players. Of course, if you aren't willing to do that at some point in the game, I don't see how you can function as a GM.

Just to clarify, my comment wasn't to say that such a drastic limitation of flaws was IMO a good idea, just that it would vastly simplify the situation.

I'm all for house ruling in general, particularly about edges and flaws. But as much as it pains me, I have to agree with Toturi, particularly on the allergies part. There's no rule system for defining how common any particular material is, and so any ratings you give for them are inherently unreliable.

Of course, you can also determine how common the materials are...

If your players have a habit of taking, say, plutonium as an allergy, suddenly plutonium slugs are all the rage.

There is an interesting Ed-Toturi discussion going on.

Ed, I'll just jump in the middle of the thread to say I agree with you on most of what you say about a GM's perspective of the game.
Said that, I know people just like Toturi who are more comfortable when they don't have to make any possibly personal decisions about rules because in this way nobody can call them unfair. So -they say- their games-ruling is not biased. I believe thus they feel more self-confident about providing a predictable and unbiased game-setting.

BTW. Are you a lawyer IRL Toturi?

It is a matter of tastes. I run a game similar to Ed's, and I do use my GM fiat to approve or dissaprove any character presented to me. I have even allowed some characters who (ohmygod) ARE NOT CANON. I just made sure to have the complete group's consensus behind my ruling, plus, I use a consistent, well argumented criteria.

Plus, I am very happy that your clueless player had gone to amuse people elsewhere else. The stories were funny, though.

Cheers,

Max

No. Just a bookninja.

To me, it is not so much a lack of confidence, but more of the case that if I paid good money to buy the books, I might as well get my money's worth by using the books to the last printed letter. Since sometimes I(or the other GM) cannot make it to the sessions, we decided the best way not to step on each other's toes and to keep PCs portable between GMs is to follow strict canon. GM fiat is alright as long as there is 1 GM trying to keep things consistent, but when you have 2 or more GMs, GM fiat might end up be schizophrenic. His fiat might not be my fiat and we do not want to end up in a situation where a PC who may leap tall buildings in a single bound in my games can barely climb up the stairs in his.

The problem with this is the level of pedantry you often exhibit in your posts makes it seem like you're operating in direct violation of

Would like some advise on talking to another player.

He is from a AD&D background and tries to play Shadowrun as such. Kick door down, charge in, kill everything, take their stuff, and have mage heal you, type of play.
This quite often ends up with him being at least seriously injured, and the rest of the party unhappy.
On the two times out of the eight runs that the players character has died, the player has brought in a clone, brother, cousin, of his last character, who is angry at whom ever caused the last characters demise.

So how do get the player to stop running his characters in such a way that will eventually result in a TPK before the rest of the group goes to the GM and asks that he give the player the boot?

Instead of killing him, have him get caught by the cops. Send him through a full trial, and have him sentenced to a couple of years in federal-pound-me-in-the-ass-Mr.-Troll-prison. Roleplay all of it. It's the only way for him to learn that some genres assume that there are consequences to actions.

If this is the guy's first try at SR pull him aside and explain to him how SR is more like a D&D campaign where all the PCs are playing thief characters and that his heavy handed fighter/berserker style was counter productive.
If he cant grok that then he needs to be spanked a few times by the party to keep him in line since it doesn't seem like the GM sees what's happening.

If they guy can't take the hint...knock your GM upside the head and tell him to get rid of the guy.

Also, if he is abusing character creation with clone characters, start requiring that any new character have no associations with the previous character, and tell him that you will firmly disallow any use of out-of character or previous character knowledge.

Other than that, I agree with what others have said. Discuss his behavior with him, and let the others know that they don't have to compromise their own roleplaying (in other words, if his character acts like an amateur, they can refuse to run with him).

I don't think you should come up with any elaborate "in-game" punishments, whether they fall under the category of "realistic consequences" or not. They eat up game time, and are far more likely to sour him on the game completely than to teach him anything.

How to talk to him?
Get a job in the mental health or addictions field. Find and take a course on Motivational Interviewing techniques. Use that.

GM: So how did the game go, in your opinion?
Player: Well I died, that sucked.
GM: It sucked that you died.
P: I wish I didn't die all the time.
GM: Sounds like you'd have a better time if your characters didn't die so often.
P: Yeah, everybody else's characters stay alive.
GM: What I'm hearing is that you want your character to be more like the others.
P: No, not the same type or anything, just to be able to keep playing them.
GM: I see, you want your character to behave more like the others.
P: I think so....
GM: Tell me more about that.
P: If I played my character like those guys did, then he wouldn't die so much.
GM: And you'd have a better time.
P: Yeah, I would. I want to play my character the way those guys do.
GM: Sounds like you want to to learn from them how they play their characters.
P: Yeah.

and so on....

That reads like an RPG flavored version of the output from the old ELIZA program.