Mage: "Take that: a Trid Phantasm of Trolls in speedos!"
Victim: "No. Noooooo. Arrrrrrrgh!"

Touche'

Mr Lucky and his Edge does throw a monkey wrench into the gears but how well does he do once his Edge is blown? (I don't remember the build off the top of my head, but then again I tend to skim over builds as well.)

Thats quite possibly the funniest thing I've read in a loooong while!

Oh, here's the example:

The team's van is barreling up to the waterfront, only to discover their target's speedboat is already a klick out to sea, dodging its way at full speed through the Seattle waterfront traffic. The troll sam shouts: "Drek! I can't get a bead!" So, Mr. Lucky grabs the HMG from the troll, which he can barely lift, and takes a shot.

The lighting conditions are bad: Extreme Range (-3), Partial light (-2), With Glare (-1) and Heavy rain (-4, this is Seattle, after all). Mr . Lucky is in a moving vehicle (-3) as is his target; the GM assigns an additional -3 to reflect the boat's speed and pitching. The target has total cover (-6), and since Mr. Lucky only has the vaugest idea what he's shooting at, he gets the -6 Blind fire penalty. To make, matters worse, MR. Lucky has two Serious wounds, for 9 boxes on both monitors (-6). He's never even picked up an HMG before (-1), but he does know where the selector switch is, and cranks the thing into full auto for a narrow burst (-9, doubled to -18 because it's a heavy weapon and the gas-vent system is fouled due to an earlier critical fumble).

Mr. Lucky is at -53 to hit. He could try to aim, but since there's no point, he simply hauls the thing into the general direction and fires. He has a negative dice pool, so he spends a point of Edge, giving him 8 dice to roll. He could simply *buy* two successes with that; if he were to roll, he'd average 2.66 successes, rounded up to 3. Since his target is an average wageslave, he only has his Reaction of 3 to defend with, which will average one success-- not enough. And since Mr. Lucky called for a Narrow Burst, there's simply no way the target can soak.

That's... sick.

That's abuse is what it is, but it's funny as hell.

I always thought -53 + 8 = -45

Edit, ah, except for the specific Long Shot test.

Except then, longshots become completely impossible. In the example above, there's no reason why the shot couldn't succeed-- unlikely, yes, but not impossible. It also unfairly penalizes low-Edge characters: a -1 shot becomes impossible for an Edge 1 character.

not to mention the incompetence *gives* BPs without wasting precious negative quality BPs, whereas a partially used uncouth/infirm/uneducated or whatever quality both gives and takes BPs, and cuts into the amount of BPs you can spend on negative qualities.

in other words, if you're infirm but intend to ever use, oh, i dunno, say, infiltration, perception, and gymnastics (just as some examples), then you're looking at spending a minimum of 12 extra BPs just for the privilege of using those skills at all. while still being unable to climb, swim, sprint, etc. that's a net gain of 8 BPs only (minimum, if you want at better than rating 1 it gets even worse). additionally, you have used up 20 of your allowed negative quality BPs for a net gain of only 8 BPs.

in comparison, if you take incompetence: swim, incompetence: climb you have already gained 10 BPs with none of those BPs needing to be be spent towards un-crippling yourself. you don't need to put any points into the other 10 or so physical skills that infirm would prevent you from using, and you still have 25 points left that you can choose from the negative qualities (allergy and addiction, here i come!)

from a numbers perspective, you are much better off with just incompetence than you could ever be with the broader skills, unless you literally *never* intend to use *any* of those skills (and on that note, there are two words you should never use, because they will always get you in trouble: never and always)

I just take Incompetencies for skills I know I won't have karma to spare for a long time. For me it doesn't matter if the cost is double, triple, or to the power of 10, because as a mage, my next 200 karma are already spent on initiation, metamagic, magic attribute, drain attribute, magic skills, spells, foci, quickenings, etc. I simply won't have any karma to spare for social skills or physical skills until I'm an old man.

Skillwires (4) is incredibly cheap and I split the cost of skillsofts with my friends. The whole problem with Incompetencies are completely sidestepped with a very small stack of cash. In no time flat I have skill 4 in everything I need.

Well every good mage should be burning one or maybe two points of Essence anyways, so as long as there is room left over for ( Rating 3 ) Cybereyes then it is nuyen very well spent.

True, but the copy protection on the skillsofts can be hacked, which means you can share the cost of the skillsofts with all your teammates.

For example, we all need Perception (4) skillsoft which costs 12k, so in a team of four runners, it only costs each of us 3k.

Better living thru piracy!

Remember though that it isn't clear whether cracking copy protection removes it entirely or just allows you to make a single copy.

The big thing to remember with incompetencies is that they are one of the flaws that raise Notoriety, so too many of them can really mess you up in any kind of social situation.

The big thing to remember with skillwires is that, while incredibly versatile, they don't allow you to spend Edge on use of the skillwired skill. For a useful utility skill or so, that's not too big of a drawback, but for skills such as perception or dodge, it's a very important thing to be able to add bonus dice or negate a glitch when you need to.

Also, there are lots of more tempting pieces of 'ware for a mage, although this is getting more into my personal preferences. Synaptic booster 2 (if you can afford it) gives you a permanent initiative boost. Cerebral booster 2 improves your Drain attribute. Cybereyes pimp your line-of-sight. And even the pain editor (after char-gen), while dangerous, is tempting (ignore Drain and get +1 Willpower).

The actual mechanica effect of Incompetences on Notoriety and Street Cred is minimal. Since Street Cred can never go below zero, starting off with negatives doesn't hurt you. And as far as Notoriety goes, it actually helps you in intimidation sessions.

All multiple Incompetences do is slow down your acquisition of Street Cred. And given the way the rules work, it's not that big of a hassle.

Lots of GMs do.

Well, not so much to make you burn edge, but to keep you paranoid (or, ironically, to make you grow complacent). Lots of games, you say "roll perception," and the group responds with "I roll perception and ready my crossbow" or "I roll perception and pull the pin on a grenade," or "I roll perception and cast invisibility."

So if you make 'em roll over and over and over again, with every corner they turn and every car that rolls by... well, they never know WHEN to metagame and "bulk up" just before they get ambushed.

Back, and whooooo boy.

Not only is my munchkin a Bunkered Rigger-Hacker who can out-hack the technomancer so much that the TM wants to quit... He's also Mr. Lucky. He spent full points on Edge, even going so far as to take Lucky, and get eight dice.

To the point that the technomancer, when I asked if she was gonna trace Nabo's commlink (Because I'd already had her visiting the Cathode Glow, and having known Zipper in passing), she said "Why don't you just get Edgey McEdge over there to do it."

So, yeah... I'm thinking this might present a bit of a.... Problem.

You could help her reroll? To be frank, it's not that my charachter is awesome, it's that her charachter...is not a good hacker. At all. She doesn't know the TM rules that well.

While I do enjoy shoveling all the blame on munchkins in this case I gotta agree.

In his thread he gave a layout of what happened in the adventure and I mentioned that I'd be worried about the TM being sidelined. He hadn't said anything about that. It's just that he did the hacking and all sorts of alarms went off. An experienced TM should have been able to do the same thing, except without the alarms.

This indicates that you've got a newbie TM.

A TM is not a newbie friendly class. Many people have a hard time doing anything with them, we even have some experienced GMs around here who have demonstrated that they really have no clue how to use a TM right.

But handled properly they are the gods of the matrix. And rigging for that matter.

Personally I'd suggest.

1. Post her char, and, if she's OK with it, maybe have us tweak things a little under the hood, staying within her origional concept.

2. Do a write up for her about how to use TMs, and/or have her read the books some. We can help with that too. A starting TM should generally be able to hack on the fly a system with all ratings at 6 except for firewall which is 10 and has a couple rating 5 spiders watching the thing on the inside, and a pair of IC ready to launch on an alert loaded with attack and armor (or attack and analyze if a spider triggers the alreat). Unless the dice are mean they should not need edge to do so, a starting hacker will. Also maybe walk her through some matrix actions, it doesn't take long to properly thread and use sprites, but it isn't intuitive to everybody.

3. Suggest matrix actions she could do when possible. She may not know she can tap a comcall or any number of the matrix options out there. I'd say suggest at least one thing per half hour of play time if she doesn't come up with stuff herself. The matrix is everywhere, in everything, in SR4 there is so much room to use it, and TMs have so much lattitude with what they can do because against most systems they're functionally undetectable, so they can hack without alarms. Often it's a formality actually bothering to roll(if they're hacking a lot you may want to acutally just let them buy successes against systems that don't really have a chance)

4. Have the muchkin take her under his wing. A female TM (probably with high charisma) and a cha 1 male shut in rigger? Yeah, she should get some drones to play with out of that, and without having to even ask in the first place. I don't suggest that in a mean push are the muchkin way. Talk to him ahead of time and have some fun RPing that.

He could have hacked without setting off alarms, the fact is that he choose to just pwn the security hacker's ass in cyberambush, dumpshocked him, and the hacker set off all kinds of alarms.

As for the Matrix... I try, I really do. I ran the TM and the hacker through Knasser's "starting corp" run prior to the game, just to see what they'd do. It actually went fairly well, I left them schmooze in quietly and work together to hack up one Admin account, with which the rigger used to create another for his friend.

They completed the run, got their paydata, and the rigger decided to lurk for paydata, while the TM vandalized the elf meet and greet on the way out, making her into a poorly-rendered naked elf.

That resulted in a climactic action, getting the paydata while security was on the rigger's butt, but ultimately, they managed. Anyway....

I have no objections to her rebuilding her character, but since I've never made a TM (and never played a hacker that got to hack, even though I've made a few), I have no idea what she should do.

Don't worry about the matrix thing. I suggest activly thinking about how to incorporate it into the game regularly. I have to do that to, it's just easy to let it slip, but it plays better when it's there. IMHO.

We really should have a stickied "this is how TMs work" thread around here.

Maybe post her char.

I have asked her to do so, to seek advice, and I'm perfectly willing to let her rebuild her character.

Not to jump into your alls conversation here but just a thought, your solution to deal with a character who may or maynot be overpowered, is to make the other characters overpowered? Your not the first GM to decide this course of action and end up really regretting it.

What else would you do? Have me tell Jtuxyan "I'm sorry, but while your character is highly effective, and entirely within the rules, he's too effective, take 50 points worth of nerf."

I forsee that going over about as well as if I dropped by his dorm and hit him over the head with a mag-lite for no reason whatsoever.

Well then I submit to you that we don't have a problem with a Cha 1 Uncouth Rigger, we have a problem with a player who is having trouble playing well with others. Sounds like he's still trying to "win" role-playing.

No, he role-plays well.

He tries to win at roll-playing, but he's also a good roleplayer.