Based off the conversations here, the character critiques and more I find my self curious on how often Edge is rolled, player by player, in the average game?

It could be very true of many games I've played in the past that any given character might only be expected to make a half dozen rolls in the entire game (barring, say, initiative and the like). the only time they roll more is when the fit hits the shan and they are totally inadequate for whatever it is they are facing, like the decker/hacker trying to bring down a troll in hand to hand. If he dodges well enough this could be a loooonnng fight.

The impression I get is that with a high enough Edge score the average character should never, or almost never need to roll an 'un-edged' check, and not designing your character around a high edge score is foolishness.

In 2070, the only real runners are the lucky ones....

Not in my experience. We play once a week for six or seven hours and during that time my players will make a lot more than a 'half dozen rolls'.

I refresh edge at the end of every session.

Refreshing Edge point by point helps, too.

The number of rolls will vary from game to game.

However, it's been my experience that you seldom need to roll edge more than 3 times per game. YMMV, of course.

Right now in Rifleman's game I'm playing a somewhat cybered human (mnemonic enhancer 2, cerebral boost 2, tailored pheromones 2, cybereyes, smartlink, and a sleep regulator) who has 6 edge.

I conceived him as a professional gambler, and have played him that way. He's intensely social, but having deep knowledge (rank 3-4)of forensics, game theory, and finance make him a bit better-rounded than your average face.

I've been playing probably 8 sessions so far - and I think I've spent about that many edge points.

Quite simply, there are points where I could have used it, but as a gambler he definitely knows that there are times not to "push your luck", so to speak

In the last campaign I was in I averaged about 2 points per session and I never had to burn any permanent.

the mage in the group did burn significantly more than I did though; he probably averaged about 4 per session.

Our GM refreshed our pools about every session.

My adept has 2 and I have never had an issue with it it serves my needs and there have been several missions where i haven't used it at all.

The big thing is haveing a team that works well together everyone has a mian duty and most have between 2 - 4 sub duties and we get the job done.

If you don't screw up you won't need edge. But if you're in way over your head that edge of 8 rocks.

Edge usage does depend on the attribute level. Usual usage is as "safety net" in case of combat situations and deterring catastrophic results on important checks. My estimate is one or two points per session. This goes up if there is no imminent threat of combat.

Initially I used the optional rule from the book that when using edge you only get dice equal to the number of edge points left, but quickly realized that all that made the players do was use their last one or two points for extra initiative passes or winning initiative which is not reliant on extra dice. I also discovered that my players were making lots of rolls and using Edge often, so I changed it back to the standard rule and also refresh it more often (end of each session now).

As for a general guide to how often it is used, it depends on the character. I have six players and the focused guys like the troll adept, elf driver/smuggler, mage and technomancer have low edge scores and only use it to save their bacon, especially since the driver, mage and technomancer crumble if they get hit. The well rounded characters (a street sam and a B&E specialist) have higher scores and generally burn through it all each game, since they are the ones making skill rolls for all the social, infiltration, and other things where a bad roll can ruin the entire mission, plus they also need it to survive combat.

I like players (even people with high pools) to run out of edge sometimes. So I tend to refresh edge at plot points. (usually significant periods of downtime - the night before the run when they focus, the night two weeks later when they count the cash, not the night they spend hiding in the safehouse getting no sleep because they think ever alley cat and medevac chopper is the corporate hit-team coming to get them. etc)

Doing it this way also makes it a little easier to just stop playing and pickup next time when necessary (I have a few players with 'hard' curfews in the sense that any later and they risk sleeping over their alarm for work the next day, haha.) without having to worry about whether or not edge refreshes, or needing to remind players if it -doesn't- "well it would, but we're in the middle of a scene so it won't today" etc.

I don't refresh point by point because it penalizes the higher edge players unless you refresh the points very frequently, at which point you might as well just give them all at once less often anyway.