My personal interpretation, as well as discussing it with my friends who play, is that basically credsticks are like cash, and commlink secure transactions are like credit cards, or something of that ilk. So, for example, you can buy whatever you need in your day-to-day life with cash, but if you go into a car dealership and throw 20 grand on the table; yes, you are going to get funny looks. It's more of a judgement call- would you pay for a fancy dinner with cash, or with your Platinum Amex? Just because it's considered crude in 'fancy' or extremely expensive situations, doesn't mean someone is necessarily going to call the cops (they'll probably just think, "I wonder what *they* do for a living..")

That aught to make things interesting at least. Part of the concept was someone who looked like he was in a bad lab accident; burnt to a crisp face (1CH), raspy voice, cybered hands and eyes.

And a mage, but I was just looking to make the most bitter and F'ed up PC I could.

So I guess I can make his first order of business attempting to make himself look and sound like himself at least. I wonder how hard it is to go and register a change of apperence form for your SIN...

"Yes I was horribly burned and need to have my voice and face rescanned for my SIN."

Where would you even GO to get that kind of stuff done? And you'd probably need to pass a lvl6 SIN check to modify anything.

Now all I can think of is a run to go and update someones ID data after a rouge scientist ran a genmod on them and they have NO way of proving who they are and get back to their normal life.

DNA might not match enough, face and voice would fail. Good luck on the fingerprints. I'm sure that with 2070 tech you could completely take away someone's life if you wanted too. Welcome to being a SINless ork Mister Jones; you should have given me that promotion...

The DMV

seriously, though. You are talking about updating a REAL SIN, correct? Then, since it is a 100% authentic SIN, you could just go to a government identification facility and get your SIN updated. There would be no rolls to check the SINs authenticity, even though it WILL be checked, it will pass with flying colors, since it IS real. It would be perfectly easy to do. That is provided that you aren't wanted under an alias and a photo graph of your current appearance is available to the authorities. In which case, walking into a government facility might be a bad thing, I'd make sure I didn't bring ANYTHING fake or illegal along with me. No other fake SINs or anything. Then, as long as you could provide sufficient evidence that the individual on the wanted poster isn't you, you'll be just fine.

"Honestly, officer, if that were me, do you think I would be walking into a government facility in no way trying to disguise my identity?"

Then you wait in line for 5 hours, your shoes sticking to some tacky substance on the floor, till your number is called, talk to a disgruntled old woman that smells like cigarettes, provide finger print, DNA sample and tri-vid image facial scan, which will take at least 5 tries to get something that will actually resemble your (and it will look terrible) all to be updated on the SIN.

Doing things LEGALLY are 10x easier than doing them illegally, in the long run. If you purchase a firearm legally and use it for completely legitimate reasons, you aren't going to be arrested. That being said, since when are shadowrunners hired to do legal and legitimate runs?

Back to real SINs, the disadvantage about them is they are REAL. If, for some reason, you are suspected to be involved in illegal activity, it is far easier to tag you and track you down. I think a real SIN without a criminal record is a lot more difficult to maintain than one with a criminal record. Shadowrunners don't do things that keep a clean record. And it hurts a lot more when you have a good sin and it gains a criminal record than having one with a record already. Keeping a SIN record clean requires A LOT of work.