No...I'm not - I'm distinguishing between the various levels of social-fu.

The munchy: 1 cha, no social skills, uncouth
the thoughtless: 1 cha, no social skills
the weak: 1 cha, few/low social skills
the at-least-capable-of-attempting-any-given-roll: stat of 2, social skills not completely unlikely
and
the functional character: stat of at least 2, some appropriate skills - notably negotiation and etiquette.


and mfb: 1 cha and 2 etiquette isn't going to get your sammy any replacement ammo, is it? It's survivable, it's just that there are circumstances where even an assumed default of 1 die is enough to eventually talk your way past, but a 0 die default is problematic, at best.

Dunno bout you, but I turn to my fixer, who's already selling me illegal goods, when I want my ammo. I don't have to talk anyone into doing it. I slot the cred, he sends me a present, simple as that. The idea that someone needs doses of Cha and social skills just to do a simple ammo purchase is a little weird to me.

Do you make your players make Cha tests for purchasing medicine or groceries too? I mean, seriously, where do you draw the line?

what Jhaiisiin said. if it's standard stuff, i shouldn't have much trouble getting it from my fixer. at worst, i'll be paying a bit more than his more sociable customers. that's assuming that i don't just hand that job over to the team's face, who i'll be turning to for harder-to-get stuff anyway.

A bit more?

It's an opposed cha+negotiation roll! Against a fixer! Your 0 dice vs. his what? 10-15?

By the book, you'd be paying an average of 3-4x cost of anything.

if you houserule the test away, that's fine. But that's not a particularly good argument that 1 cha is OK in standard games.

If I have a fixer out to screw me on prices, then I've got bigger problems than my dice pools.

Ah, so this is like the "I'm allowing the heal spell to heal drain, not applying vision modifiers, and allowing spell targeting using radar and ultrasound...doesn't everybody think magic is overpowered?" thing?

If you arbitrarily remove the limitations inherent, of course cha 1 is going to be just fine. And using the rules-as-written is NOT "trying to screw you on prices."

You're misrepresenting the abstract nature of the opposed test. It's not a fixer screwing a character on prices, it's the character failing to give or understand what the fixer wants. Failing the test can mean anything: calling at inconvient time, not knowing when to shut up, making a slur or other faus pax, trying to bully him or just being a bad contact for him. Your fixer is not a charity, and he's probably not you best chum, either. He's running a business and you failing a test means you're making business bad for him. Maybe he ups the cost cause you shoot your mouth off, so he doesn't know if he can trust you to keep quiet, etc.

Fair enough. Probably was me misinterpreting (wouldn't be the first time) but it seemed like it was coming across as "Make this test or the guy raises his prices through the roof" which seemed a little harsh. They should start at a certain price (based on street pricing and such) and then drop from there depending on how the negotiation goes. At least, that's usually my perception of it. I dunno, if I bought a box of ammo at 100 nuyen one week, and then the next week some chum tries to charge me 400, I'm gonna pitch a fit.

Also, is it illegal to buy ammo in 2070 from a standard arms shop? (I'm at work, with no access to books atm, so not sure...) I mean, modern day, you want ammo, head on down to Weapons World and buy some, ya know?

All firearm rounds, with the exception of capsule and taser darts, have at least restricted availability. Now, a good fake SIN will usually work at a Weapons World, but if it does fails, a Charisma 1 character is going to be at a disadvantage when explaining why his SIN came up invalid.

That basically is how it's supposed to work, except in reverse - it starts at the legal price (modified by certain details - which means it can be cheaper than book-price) and goes up based on how badly the fixer outnegotiates you. Faces tend to get things for a good price, most functional characters pay more, but not enough to get gouged...but the cha 1 no negotiation guy can't even try to save money.

AFAIK, it's not illegal to buy (some types of) ammo at a gun shop - you might need a license. But you'd need to watch out for stealth/security RFIDs implanted in the bullets. After all, isn't that legislation already being argued in real life?

edit: heh - at least tasers aren't more illegal than guns in 4th ed. One thing they definitely fixed.

(sigh) edit2: it goes up because of basic economics - the fixer isn't going to sell at a loss. Mechanics that work the other way tend to create perpetual cash machines (see Fallout 1)

LOL An expected result though. A cha 1 character is going to rely on his gear/id to talk for him. If that stuff fails, he's up a creek, so to speak, and that's something the Player should go in understanding on the front end.

Me? It'd be opportunity for some fun times/quotes/whatever as I tried to have my character BS his way out of a horribly bad situation. But then, I only take Cha 1 if I intend to play it as such.

regardless, handling stuff like this is the whole point of having a face on your team. if you don't have a face on your team, well, send the guy with the highest social dice pools. if nobody has reasonable social dice pools, then you've screwed up.

Depends on the game. As far as I'm concerned, a character who can't equip himself is a liability equally likely to get you killed as one who can't defend himself.

we've already established that this character can equip himself. because he's not good at it, he has to pay more, but he can do it.

Perhaps I should have said "won't" equip himself then? Or at least that the player complains if he's asked to make a roll that involves cha, or pays more than other, more socially functional characters?

It's not like any character I play is going to call the team hacker to set up his PC (hire him to, maybe)...why should the face go pro bono every time someone goes shopping?

If you absolutely, positively need something for the run which you had no reason to already have, fine - and that specific case usually comes out of the run's expenses. Hell, even if the face volunteers, fine. I dislike the 'your character exists solely as extra bp for my character' aspect.

why wouldn't you have the hacker set up your commlink? that's his job. he can do it better than you can, and if he does it, you're less likely to be compromised, meaning he's less likely to be compromised since he's a known associate of yours. same goes for the face--the whole point of having him on the team is so that he can handle the team's negotiations. why would that not include negotiations for equipment? it's not 'your character exists solely as extra bp for my character', it's teamwork.

I'm with mfb on this one, you don't go see your fixer for a box of 10mm, you go when you have a list of stuff, and then you send in the face who get's it all for half price...
And even if the cha 1 character goes shopping, a smart fixer would give this guy an honest price just so the guy comes back...
A little profit is better than no profit...

On a run, yes - and he gets paid for it. Outside of it?

What do your characters do in their downtime? Just sit in the team squat and wait for the next call?

Can't leave the mage's LOS - he won't be able to provide counterspelling.
Who wants to hang out 24-7 with the same group of people criminals?
Especially ones who have been through high-stress life-or-death situations over and over again, and are probably near, or even past the breaking point?
Who might get a better offer tomorrow, and sell you out?

Better to maintain your own space, and sense-of-self.
Grow too reliant on any one team member, and you're shortening your life expectancy.

By this reasoning you should also be able to hack and cast, can't count on the hacker or mage for that either...

taking an argument to its most ridiculous extreme does not disprove it. i'm not saying the team members should all live in each others' pocket, i'm saying that there's no point in being on a team if you're not going to act like one. and, as has already been stated several times now, this character is not dependent on the face for resupply. it's merely easier and cheaper to have the face do it.

No - you should attempt to develop additional contacts outside of your immediate group who can, however.

edit: otherwise there's no reason for anyone but the face to take contacts, ever - it's just cheaper and easier to concentrate all that on one guy.

exactly...

In my experience he face always has more contacts, just like the sammy always has more guns...

call it a personal prejudice, then. Characters that are intentionally broken to save bp/karma in ways that would make them dysfunctional, at best, annoy me no end.

edit: Of course the face has more contacts, the sammy has more guns, and the hacker has more programs. It's their job - they should be effective at it. That doesn't excuse the 'pistols 6(+2) is the only skill I'll ever use' mindset.

this character is not dysfunctional. he may not be well-liked by his peers, but he's not some kind of social reject.

They might spend their time together, because they really became friends, or at least good work-colleagues, who trust each another, to work regularely as a shadowrunning team. Some even go so far to give their team some kind of weird nickname.
Other criminals who always work with them regularely, appearantly.
Perhaps bonding with another teammember does prevent you from breaking the point, and instills loyalty. Some street samurais do after all still follow some kind of weird bushido-codex, with all that honour-stuff. It's all about reputation too, after all.
The Team-Face might be loyal enough to his comrades to not do that, and perhaps the team-members might try to rescue him somehow. Yes, I know, 'might', but it's not that uncommon that Player Character Shadowrunners do have some more 'fellowship' toward each another than perhaps NPC Shadowrunners.
That's too negative, I think. If most time it's worth it, it's really worth it.

Having a stat of 1 does not indicate a broken character, as previously explained by others several times...
I heard there are people we call "roleplayers" who also take low stats to make the characters they want...
Having 3 in each stat means covering all the bad points, which is also part of the min-max theorie...
Minimize downsides, maximize specialties...

At the worse end of the scale he certainly is. At the best end, he's simply unnecessarily crippled.

for chrissake, he's not crippled. just because everybody in your games has to sink half their bp into being a face doesn't mean that it works that way in every game, or in the default setting.

sigh...

yes, a player who takes a stat of 1 and intends to suffer the consequences is just fine.

read through the thread and look at how many people are arguing that someone else can make the roll for him, or only bad GMs would ever ask for a roll against a characters intentional weakness.

At NO point have I said you should have straight 3s.

The average dicepool for a non-face in social tests in the games I've run is around 3-4. Hardly half their bp. Usually they take cha 1-2 and influence group 1-2. But then I play with people who design characters, not spreadsheets.

Oh come on. In Shadowrun ammo expenditure tends to be way less than it would be in reality. In years of GMing SR3 I've seen so many runs where a character can complete the whole assignment without needing to reload a Predator. Even if a character is getting gouged on ammo he can still get it in quantities that will hardly cripple him.

Shoot, man. Whenever I made SR characters I usually had enough left-over starting cash to buy each character a lifetime supply of "normal" ammunition. And "normal" ammunition with the 9+ damage code of a Heavy Pistol certainly suffices.

I'm not sure what you're arguing against there - I've played and run games where absolutely no combat happened whatsoever.

But nobody asked for (let alone expected) someone else to make rolls for them either (with, admittedly, the exception of drive/pilot checks since most players were passengers) - which is what I'm arguing against.

I have never heard anyone who took a stat of 1 complain about the consequences...
But doesn't it make sense to let the people who know what they're doing do their thing?
My Face/Doc is a disaster in combat, so I let the combat characters handle it...
This doesn't mean I can avoind all combat, it just means that I'll try to...
Same with a sammy with no social skills...

And I never said you did say anything about straight 3's, but you brought up points I never brought up too...

fair enough - but I wasn't arguing solely against you.

And it sounds like you'd fit in reasonably well in one of my games.

That description you're giving there is pretty much what I've been arguing, only to be told that charisma 1 isn't a weakness, because someone else on the team should be making those rolls.

That doesn't fly for the body 1 character with a troll teammate, it shouldn't work for the charisma 1 character with a face teammate, either.

He could avoid most times, but when he can't it'll bite him in the ass.

Yeah, I was just rereading the thread and realized we were both arguing the same point from different viewpoints...

Just FYI, my face/doc with 1 str and bod is doing fine so far, just hit the deck till the lead stops flying...

It depends. A character who sucks at combat will probably know it but the sammie with no social skills might not notice he's a total buzzkill

What is probably crystal clear by now that this has (once more) become a clash of playing styles. As I posted earlier I'm more the "stat at 1 is a flaw" kind of GM but then, my players are ok with it and have fun and it's generally my playstyle that most characters should know how to handle themselves alone at least in casual social situations and that the group's cybered up gunbunny shouldn't be too easily manipulated by the next guy with a few dice in leadership or con.
If my players told me they don't like that style of gameplay I'd reevaluate what they expect from the game and either adapt or quit if the result wouldn't be fun anymore.
As it is now, I think the argument for or against dump stats is rather futile. Technically there is NO associated penalty to keeping a stat at 1 other than the backdraw of contributing only one lousy die to any associated skill tests and not being able to default without edge.
Philosophically it's an argument between different views of how the gameworld works or should work and I doubt it will ever lead to a conclusion on this side because it's just based on personal oppinions which are difficult to quantify and to prove.

i'm not sure about anyone else, but i didn't say that having a Cha of 1 wasn't a weakness. i simply contend that it's a weakness which can frequently be compensated for. i mean, it does generally fly for the Bod 1 char with the troll teammate--the Bod 1 char keeps his head down and lets the troll run out into situations where he might get shot. having a troll teammate doesn't help if the Bod 1 char gets ambushed walking out of his apartment, of course, just as having a face won't help a Cha 1 char who finds himself needing to talk his way out of a speeding ticket. but it does mean that the Cha 1 character can have the face do the talking in situations where the face is available--which is frequently the case.

Maybe I'm jumping on something that was an exaggeration but why would the average character in any campaign have the influence group at all?

This seems like another way of min/maxing just more carefully disguised.

Look at the Face archetype in the BBB and he doesn't even have the influence skill group. Now this could be construed as he wanted to take etiquette 5 and negotiation 5 but it could also come off as why would this character have points in Leadership.

You could explain away that the character is naturally influential but skills are meant to be skills, they're something that a character put time and effort into learning. Many people don't have an ounce of leadership ability.

To me it seems like these people you play with who are designing characters not spreadsheets are trying to get Con, Negotiation, and Etiquette on the cheap without putting much thought into why their character has the skill group at all beyond that. I'm not saying that the influence group isn't suitable for some character concepts but generally it's not. From what I gather from the quoted text it's being used to 'plug holes' without much thought given at all to character concept.

Again maybe I'm jumping on an exaggeration but as was said earlier trying to cover up all your character's weaknesses is another form of min/maxing.

From the perspective of writing a character rather then building one flaws are generally more interesting then supermen or jack of all trades characters who have no weaknesses. From a build point perspective there's two ways to create flawed characters, lower then average stats, and negative qualities. From a role-playing perspective it's primarily up to the player to emphasize these flaws in their character, if they fail at that then it should fall on the GM to do so. The body 1 and 2 characters will have weaker immune systems and therefore will be sick more often then the rest of the team. If the player doesn't want to grab a hold of this role-playing opportunity then I feel it's with in the GM's rights to do so. Hopefully the player will catch on and have fun with the fact that his character has a cold, if he doesn't, so be it. The GM can have him sneeze at in opportune moments, tell him his nose is full of snot and he'll be distracted until he blows it, etc. etc. This isn't punishing the player, it's making the character realistic and believable.

Low stats and negative qualities should be emphasized as much if not more then high stats and positive qualities because it creates interesting characters. Now if a group is more into roll-playing then role-playing more power to them, my entire argument can be ignored.

If this was directed at me, I made no such claim!

Making one character roll (or make a test or buy hits or whatever) in a situation when other characters in that same situation do not have to even think about doing the same thing (buy hits, make test etc) is what I was protesting. If all of the characters have to make a test (etc), then that is fair, as I have claimed a few times.

As for 'crippled characters' merely because they have low Attributes, I just have to point to the 160 BP cost for straight 3s across the eight basic stats. There is not a lot of play left, and unless you want to play Joe the Grocer with a '3' in 4 Attributes and a '4' in the others, something has to give.

Charisma 1 is definationally weak social skills. I routinely work with people who have social skills that could be best classified as 'weak' (Have you worked in IT?)

I'm not sure where you get the idea that people with charisma one are completely unemployable.

While this is true to a certain extent, do you really trust both characters with your life in a dystopian world full of people selling their mothers' organs for a couple of .
The hacker can get you killed, tracked, bugged without you even knowing about it.
Do you really know who he's working for? Doesn't he have a personal agenda that could come to haunt you and the group at the worst possible moment?

The face will then be the only one with the right contacts.
What happens if something happens to him, or he's out of town for a couple of weeks, etc.

I guess it all comes down to the groups’ preferences and grittiness of the game.
But I have a hard time imagining a group of trained criminals without personal agendas in a dog eat dog world throwing all of that paranoia out the window because "Hey, he's my runner buddy, I trust him "

If you don't trust the Decker to do the decking, a Face to do the talking, a Mage to work the mojo...etc, why do you still consider yourself to be part of a team?

Do you consider yourself to be part of a team? Do you make a character that will fit in with the group as a whole and be a valuable part of it, propping up the weaknesses of others and doing his share? Or does every one of your characters have GITS helped me name "stand-alone complex," where you try to make a perfectly rounded, do-it-all-yourself, character that doesn't need anyone else to get the job done?

What's the point in playing Shadowrun with a group of people instead of just reading a Choose Your Own Adventure book, if you don't trust in your teammates to do their friggin' jobs?

Seriously, unless you're a full time hacker yourself, the hacker can do a number on you anyway...
Just like a good face can talk circles around someone with only average social skills...
My Face/Doc counts on the sammy and the adept for combat, if either decided to turn on me, I would stand no chance...
I don't have to like it, but apart from earning tons of karma, there's little I can do about it...
It's less about trust and more about being necessary for running the team...
It's one thing to get the basics in a field so you're less dependant, but trying to do everything yourself _will_ get you killed...
Imagine the team is getting crap from a hacker, your guy secured his own and everyone else's gear, except yours...
Who do you think is the liability in this equation?

There's a difference between trusting a teammember to cover your back during a run and the agendas they're pursuing outside of the runs.
Taking a commlink prepped by the hacker with me on a run would be no problem, but I would never use that comm when not running.

Take a couple of PC's from our current game.
One is a UCAS army face infiltrated in the runner community, one is a ganger looking to settle an old score, one is a technomancer hunted by a corp that want to complete their tests on him, one is an elf spy for someone in the Tir government.
They make a great team, but there will come a time where conflicting interests will collide and painful choices will need to be made.

They are all experts at their job, make a great team, but trusting any one of them with all of your info/contacts will bite you in the long run.

Every character, no matter how they're built, has a kryptonite. For a charisma 1 character, it's obviously social situations. But that doesn't mean social situations kill them. People are suggesting that characters should always have at least 4 dice for social encounters... 4 dice?? You might as well have 1. 4 dice gives you, on average, 1 hit. What kind of social tests require just 1 hit? Probably those that aren't life or death situations. If a character only needs 1 hit on a social test, the consequences of failing are going to be correspondingly low.

Rather than waste bp on an incredibly tiny, flaccid social pool, why not have a high edge? When an important social roll comes up, the charisma 1 sammy can add his 6 edge, and the dice will explode, netting him at least 2 hits, with a reasonable chance of 3. Sure, edge would be even better if you had 4 dice to start out, but if you had to choose between edge and charisma? It's not even a choice.

And people in the real world manage to get by with shit social skills. You can have smarts and wits which keep you safe, even if you suck at talking. I think, for Shadowrun to be a realistic game, it needs to have a realistic spread of personalities in the PCs. If all the PCs have a cookie cutter sheet, it's really going to hurt the fun of the game.

Things like this are really dependant on how Edge is handled.
If Edge is refreshed every session, sure.
If it only refreshes once every 2-3 sessions or even less, spending Edge on such stuff is not such a no-brainer.

Yeah,
but I don't usually need to negotiate or discuss bizz with gangers, criminals or psychopaths on a daily basis.
If I insult my boss he's not going to shoot me (I hope ).
Insult the wrong type in SR and you get your head blown off.

being betrayed by your teammates is a concern, and a smart runner will have contingencies that nobody else knows about, but that's a different issue. in general, if you can't depend on your team in resolving team-related problems (like making sure you've got ammo and secure comms), having a low Cha is not the root of your troubles.

Though it could explain why you ended up with that team. I don't mind Charisma 1 characters personally (especially in 4th edition), but I have noticed that it was always the first attribute players would raise when they got a little karma. Though I wonder if Strength 1 faces are pretty common, too?

I have a Troll Merc I sometimes play with my Group. Street name Bonk. He is your typical troll guy.
B/A/R/S/C/I/L/W = 12/4/7/10/2/2/2/3
He has the qualities First Impression (Likeable guy at first meeting) and Uncouth(Rude crude socially unbelievable behavior)

I play him like the loud boorish sports guy you meet at your local bar that during the first 20-30 minutes he's funny and cool. Then it hits you, this guy is jerk, loser, boor whatever. You can't stand to be around him. Off color joke at the wrong time. etc etc.

His negotiations skill is only at a 2 so I am rolling Social Checks of 4 dice all the time.
I don't consider him handicapped or worthless. Bonk is a fun character to play, one that everyone at sometime in their life has seen or been around or even has as a friend.

Like I've been saying: 4 dice is fine. It's may not be your strong suit, but it'll get you through life. It's pretty much the level I tend to expect from characters & npcs who actually deal with other people, but don't particularly try to manipulate them.

As for why a non-face might have the influence group, well - it's not like I insist on it, it's just usually easier for the players to drop a point into it and call it done, than to worry about +/-1 die on the sub-skills. As to why have non-"class" skills to begin with...most well-written and designed characters don't spring full formed into their specific profession. I mean, not every shadowrunner could have been an asocial outcast from the cradle.

(Take, as a real-life example, Harrison Ford. He's an actor now, but he worked as a carpenter for years. Bet he still knows a thing or three about woodworking.)