Im with you on this one. Ive known of too many GMs who are more than happy to chastise the hell out of you for taking a couple flaws, but take some rare edges, and they never see the light of day.

And i dont sweat it so much. The flaws will come up. The easiest ones to deal with are the ''mechanical'' flaws(ie, things a GM doesnt have to shove randomly into a campaign.)

Keep in mind also that you dont have to be...totally technical. Character has a severe phobia to cockroaches? Enemy finds out against that and hits him with a nasty illusion/phantasm. And yes, it should count.

When the flaws come up, they come up. It happens more than people think, IMO. If most GMs would just chill out(and Im a GM as well as a player, and i dont say this in a bad way) about working flaws into their campaign, and worrying the players taking them are twinking, it would be alot easier to work them in, IMO. Clear head, clear thoughts, ya know?

"Hi, Mr. GM? Yeah, you know how you gave everyone the same level of points? Well, that's not good enough for me. I want to be special, more powerful than everyone else because, you know, I'm just cool like that. So, start forking over freebies, okay?"


Not really fair, now is it?

I'm using a Champions-ish ratio, these days. A 20 pt flaw should pop up about half the time, a 10 pt about every four adventures, and a 5 pt every eight or so. Just in general.

Thus, if Nee-0 the Trenchcoat and Katana Samurai has an allergy to snakes (Well, a phobia, but, we use what rules we have), it needs to crop up sometimes, or he's been given more points than teh other PCs, but not so often that he feels like an idiot for only getting 5 points when every adventure has the new Snake-Bugs in it.

Something snakey should pop up about one in eight, just to remind him of things but not taking over. It could be as simple as the Johnson having been Surged into a split-tongued and green-scaled form, the Talismonger keeping boa constrictors in his house, or going after a hacker who uses snake icons for his programs... for whatever reason, the fates conspire to bring snakes into this guy's life every so often.

Heck, you can even toss it in as just a hint and it counts.

"Remember, punks, say anything and I'll be back." *turns, walkwalkwalk*

"Don't worry, Frankie. Ths guy's not so tough. I heard he wets himself if he gets near a garden snake."

*tuuuuurn* "What did you say?"

See?

Loads of fun! No *actual* snakes get harmed in teh making of that scene, but, they still let the flaw be known.

OK a couple more Kuna in on the topic...

...being a longtime veteran of Hero Systems myself I tend to approach flaws/NQs pretty much the same way. Champions was the first system to introduce the idea of PC Advantages and Disadvantages (I still have the original "Blue Cover" printing that looks as if the interior pages were typeset on an IBM Selectric). When FASA introduced Edges & Flaws in the first Shadowrun Companion (SR2) I thought, cool.

Having played Champions for quite a while before encountering SR, I realised that if you took a disadvantage, it would affect your character maybe not this mission, but quite possibly the next. Some of the Disads were quite serious like Hunted (you had a Supervillian gunning for you who was at least of equal ability), Secret Identity (bus driver by day, crimefighter by night, just don't get caught changing), Dependent (better check in with if Jimmy before heading to the villain's hideout) and Focus (lose that, and your John or Jane Q Normal in a pair of fancy underwear). So, simply piling on the Disads for points was really not the way to go, for you could easily end up with quite a train wreck of a character waiting to happen.

In earlier editions of SR, I noticed players were more careful as to what Flaws they took. More often than not (at least in our group), a PC would maybe have 2 - 3 flaws at best, 2 of them being lower value ones like Distinctive Style, and a level or 2 of gremlins (which had a better mechanic IMO). The only time I took one of the big "4 pointers" was Flashbacks for Leela and Gracie (which figured tightly in with their backstories). Leela's other flaws at Chargen were Infirm, Dark Secret (again from her backstory) and Distinctive Style. That was the most ever I took for a character, 7 BPs (equivalent to 35 BP in SR4 terms) but all tightly woven to the character's background, and all of which came into play at one time or another. Many times we actually used BPs from the base pool to purchase Edges.

In Champions there was little one could do to minimise or negate the effect of a Disadvantage. If you had a Focus, there wasn't much that the character could do to prevent it from being taken (implantation was forbidden by the rules). Yes it may be harder to spot, but that affected the amount of bonus the character received. In previous editions, of SR, many of the physical flaws had the ruling that they could not be negated by Cyber or bio. A Character with Cyberlegs could not have the Paraplegic flaw, Cybereyes wouldn't fix blindness etc.

By this token, coming back to the original theme of this post, Skillwires should not offset Incompetence. Yes they can only be bought to a rating 4 (actually 5 but the available skill softs only go to 4), but rating 4 skills are much more useful in SR4 than they were in SR3 since you also get your attribute added to the DP. In earlier editions Skillwires received no extra dice from pools except from the Expert Chipjack Driver in M&M. In this light, I could see adjusting my take and say that OK, you get Skillwires, and an Activesoft for a skill you are incompetent in. However, since you are such a Klutz with, say, Driving you only get the dice from the Activesoft's rating value, no Attribute and no Edge.

Gnh... snort...hehe...

BWA-HA-HA-HA!

I'm sorry, I know YMMV, but I've *never* had a Champions disad bite me in the butt quite like Shadowrun has. In fact, other than Hunted, it's rare for a disad to even sting me at all. Granted, some of that is the munchability SD referred to, but still.

This is a Shadowrun forum, after all. It should come as no surprise that someone thinks the Shadowrun (esp Sr3) method is better.

Damnnit! A new piece of totally sweet bioware, and here I am, with a sensitive system! Oh, if only the sensitive system flaw only affected cyberware, and didn't affect the Essense cost of bioware.... wait a minute.

There is, at least, a soloution to Incompetence Watercraft.


Run Ping Time, by our very own Adam.

What's that, you say? Unable to even default on a Pilot Watercraft roll? Good!

Into the drink you go, at minimum four times! Hope you have a phenominal swimming score!

...must have had a soft GM. Man we had to watch ourselves all the time. Of course I haven't played the game since the days of Champions III - the Super Supplement and Golden Age of Champions. Picking up the Hero Games "Bible" recently at my FLGS, I noticed that the game has changed quite a bit in it's scope and complexity from what I remember.

@ShadowDragon8685. This is a GM thing. If the GM permits such well that's bad for them, they just gave the PC free points. We had to run all our Disads/Limitations before our GM for approval, anything that was totally frivolous or would never affect the character was immediately nixed. We also had to present a short Origin story as well (this fellow was really into comics). It's not so much a fault of the system as it is the GM's willingness (or lack thereof) to control his or her setting.

@Cain: I have absolutely no disagreement with the SRIII Flaws, being quite "effective" which is why I prefer them over the SR4 NQs.

@Ddays, Which is why I dislike the whole Incompetence NQ in the first place. It's basically free points in exchange for a skill the character will never take (there have been discussion threads on this very topic before). In previous editions, Incompetence had to be taken in a skill the character already possessed.

...man this is getting spendy, now I have to break into my bank of Sheckels.

Wow, that was a kind thing to say, but it wasn't my intent to make this feel like a Wimbledon-class tennis match.

Thinking about it a little more, it makes total sense for a GM to say to a player 'pick your amount of negative qualities, and I'll assign them to you via random roll'. You should tell the player what flaws you rolled for them... unless they've chosen the 'I'm a total amnesiac' backstory, in which case let them figure out what will stop their addiction penalties as fast as they can shoot, snort, smoke, and drink enough pharmaceuticals to determine which one it is. Then make the rolls to see what ELSE they're now addicted to in their quest to sate that first addiction.

Anyway, the whole 'pick a number' solves many problems. First, you as the GM can make up the table, and the flaws you want to see used more often, put them in the naturally occurring average numbers (i.e., if you use 2d6, put the flaws you want to see on 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. The average roll of a d6 is 3.5, so 7 would be the most common number) and then roll those dice. Most people select flaws they can live with, but if your combat bastard of a Street Samurai suddenly develops combat paralysis, he's going to want to buy that flaw off ASAFP.

And that also lets you assign flaws as they happen. If you'd rolled a couple minor flaws for your pal the street samurai, and then hit combat paralysis, don't tell him he has it, let him think he lucked out with 'mild addiction: Bea Arthur simsense porn' and 'allergy: ork dandruff'. Then, if a combat goes very very badly, and he sees a friend or two flatline, then it's time to pay the piper for the points you picked, you poor petrified pugilist.

If someone picks only 5 points of flaws, roll until you get a 5 pointer, or maybe even give them a 'sporadic' 10 pointer (roll a die, if it's an odd number, now you have your simsense vertigo kick in). Maybe even offer 5 bonus bp (no flaws attached... maybe!) if your players do it this way. That way, you won't have characters who are incompetent in every unimportant skill (I'm incompetent in every magic skill, but it's okay, I'm a hacker) or similar harmless flaws.

...not so much yourself as just the fact it seemed things hit an impasse. I made a point, someone else shot it to bits, I tried to defend my position, & had to dodge even more bullets (thank the Greet Mother no flames at least though some of the posts were IMO a bit on the caustic side). It got to the point that nobody was willing to budge on their stand (myself included) as to how important Flaws/NQs would be.

Your post was a nice break to the whole mess which actually made much more sense than much of what had already been said. I am actually giving it serious consideration.