You'll note that the category is called 'Resources', and not 'Nuyen'.

The character may never have seen even a tenth of that million ¥, but might have been paid in cyber, or acquired things in other nefarious ways. The category also includes Contacts, which really have nothing to do with money, but are a very important resource.

I'll agree that most people that have 1,000,000¥ in their hand at any one time would probably not pursue a shadowrunning carreer (but some still would), but that is not the way the Resource category works.

Contacts ..... my first Face character listed Contacts as "one of each". Yes, he started with high resources.

The same argument could be said of taking 50 skill points, its a rare 20 year old that's world class in anything. Its all in the background. I personally make my characters a little older to make room for the years of experience that helped them gain the skill knowledge, the million nuyen, or whatever.

Most munchkins just go with the stock "oh, he was a corporate assassin who vanished, paying a decker to delete all records of his existence."
Which isn't a bad example for maybe a handful of actual runners over the course of the Shadowrun world. It's once you start getting the numbers of these into the hundreds from all the munchy players out there that it gets silly.

~J

After the first handful disappeared, the corp made another handful and sent them after the first handful. They disappeared too. And so on.

If you're an experienced runner and they're really a gang, it's free money. If they have APDS, you go back to the J and demand medical costs plus additional compensation because no basic gangbusting run should involve APDS rounds.

~J

In the campaigns I find myself in, players often take the million nuyen with little to no explanation. I've played two characters with the one million nuyen option. My backgrounds:
1. Former Urban Brawler who was expelled from the league for fixing games for the Yakuza.
2. Former Witness Protection specialist who gave a few of them up for the money. Now he has a big hunted flaw, but lots of cyber.

You stated that you hated trolls. You didn't say you hated trolls and they had no reason to exist, or you hated trolls and thought they were unbalanced, or you hated trolls and everyone who plays trolls is a munchkin. You merely made a statement of opinion. What were we going to say? You lie! You really love trolls and think everyone should be one!
My characters vary in age, but are typically in their late 20s.

~J

Ok i'll jump on your case nothing beats a troll with double digit body and stregth, dikoted kantana, and wire reflexes 3

Dikoted telephone pole. You get another point or two of Reach that way.

~J

Pfft. Troll + Ranger-X Bow = No Chance To Survive.

Psht. A troll with a ranger-X only deals about as much damage as an assault cannon, only starts at M, and doesn't have the 2.4 km range.

~J

I think there are lots of runners who got their 'ware from a corporation or organized crime organization. I do think the old "They think he's dead/they're hunting him" thing gets old. There are plenty of good reasons they could be running the shadows, though. Maybe, like the former company man archetype, they realized what they were doing, got disgusted with it, and quit - but with no money and no prospects for legitimate work, they do what they used to do, only now they do it so they can retire and get out of the business altogether. Maybe they were former employees who were let go after a screw-up, or after they were made a scapegoat, or after the stresses of the job burned them out.

The company doesn't have to hunt down every single last employee! But I imagine that cybered corporate types have a high risk of burn-out, or screwing up and being fired, and so on, and the company probably chews people up and spits them out. They would arrive in the shadows with most of their money being withheld by the company to pay for their 'ware, with few options available to them other than running.

And remember that the company has economies of scale and cyber-facilities and personnel that they are paying whether they use them or not - the character is not as big of an "investment" to them, although they probably do screen the candidates thoroughly, and get a good number of years of hard use out of them before tossing them to the curb. I'm mentioning this because a lot of people seem to think that anyone with a lot of cyberware has to be either hunted by his/her former employer, or owned by his/her benefactors.

With mages, it's even easier to justify, since spellpoints, like contacts, are an abstract form of resources, and foci could easily be spoils of war or a gift from their mentor.

But Dikote quickly makes the PAC the more cost-effective option, unless the GM houserules that you can batch-coat the arrows.

~J

I'm sorry did you say Not twinked Str of 15...

Lets see...I could forgive the 9...possibly even 10, but 15...please. Unless you aren't assuming starting char...Unless you are talking 50+ karma into the game...anything above a 10 is just wrong. Hell even then a 10 is "best in the world...world renouned" abillity. Sure you could through in cyberware and extra adept boosts...But honestly... in a normal game why try to do that if you aren't twinking?

Fortune has it right.

~J

Oops, sorry. For some reason I completely missed the "cost-effective" part. <smacks self> Even without Dikote, the Ranger is a superior weapon for a runner, mostly because it's far more legal, stealthy, and rapid fire. I'd rather do two stealthy 19M base wounds than one booming 18D base one that tells everyone within fifty city blocks exactly where I am.

So use Silence!

Looks like one of my Nameless Trolls!

I had way too many of those... Way too many...

Like I said, it was likely an adept who was weilding it. Namely, an adept with Quick-Draw.

Back to the resources question: Look, let's take a starting decker who's built his own deck, and coded his own programs. He could easily have the equivalent of a million nuyen in hardware, but he's never come anywhere near that much cash.

Take a rigger who's got a level 2 or 3 contact with a vehicle facility. His backstory is that he built and designed his drones from scratch, salvaging parts from a junkyard. One or two maxed-out vehicles can easily be equal to a million nyuen; but the character never actually had a million in cash.

Quick-draw removes the ready weapon action necessary, so it's arguable that you could continually quick-draw. I'm not sure I'd allow it, but it's canon.

As for the bow being stealthy, it doesn't need to be stealthy when you have a 2+ kilometer head start

~J

I don't see any problem with using Quick Draw that way. Keep in mind that they do have to make a Quickness test each time (usually not that difficult). But if you couldn't use Quick Draw that way, there wouldn't be much point to taking it.

Jeesus... This thread sprung-up over night.

My 2000000.02 :

It's possible to create characters worth 135 BPs using the priorities system.

Wether that's imbalanced or not depends on wether or not you think the points system charges the right amount for magic.

You could just as easily say that the points system is imbalanced as it makes sammies, riggers, and deckers more powerful. The priorities system, after all, is the base character creation system from the book.

I think you should just let the players use the system they want. If they want to use the priorities system while the standard you are using is a high-point point-based then allow them to take some free edges or something

Oh yes, and my additions to the troll discussions: Trolls are probably just as well using No-Dachis as they are Katanas. The +1 TN mod they get for wielding a 2 handed weapon single-handedly is more than cancelled by the increased reach from the no-dachi (-1 tn to you and +1 tn to opponents).

The other factor is the power of the attacks. Assuming you're Dikoting both weapons; The No-Dachi does Str+2D while the katana does Str+4S. While I think we can agree that any (not-toll melee bunny) metahuman in combat with a trollish melee bunny would die, an armoured vehicle is another matter. It boils down to the fact that a katana can hurt a vehicle with 1 more point of armour (9 points of armour for a good strength troll) compared to the No-Dachi's (8 points for the same troll).

I thought you could split the total up any way you wanted? Not to mention that trolls have a natural reach of 1, and the no-dachi grants (I think) 2, making a troll combat monster armed in that manner particularly icky.

Ah. Ok. I was getting this confused with friends in melee (where both the majority gets a plus and the minority gets a minus).

Don't forget ladies and gents, for melee and I believe bows you default to strength. If your strength is greater than 11 or 12, its to your advantage to default. I think I said this in another thread, I got a troll to 28 strength straight out of chargen, the only rule broken was I allowed cultured bioware (and I think I can eliminate that without losing strength). That means 28 dice on my 28S shot and I can still use a smart link : )

Cultured bioware at chargen is not breaking a rule.
How'd you do this again?

~J

Impressive... I must remember that. You get on average 5 successes (same as a skill 6 character would without pool) but it actually scales slightly better as you add the first +5 of TN mods. It does, however become impossible (by the defaulting rules) to shoot something if you have a +6 mod. (That's why you aim...)

I have to say that is very impressive, nezumi.