okay, syntactic snafu, apologies

that might actually be the silliest thing i have ever heard somebody say, ever.

you might just as well have said "it's magic"

yes, that was a very bad pun

Perhaps. But it is still the rules however and if you hang out here long enough, you know how I am about the RAW.

The GM provides.

Not to derail or hijack, what is the deal with Unarmed Specialization? I always took it to mean a specific Martial Art, and I believe the Martial Arts rules in Arsenal support that. I am specifically referring to the paragraph on Martial Arts Specialization on p.156 of Arsenal.

not that i am doubting your wonderful and oh-so-powerful wisdom but fluff seems to support the idea that magical drugs (like deepweed and laes) are actually just magical plants that ARE harvested by the people who create the drug. i know that magical compounds cannot be synthesized but farming is just the harvesting of something that was already growing naturally. i almost think that the personal touch that could be added (when i grow plants i spend time talking to them and playing them old Rush albums and stuff) could have an effect on their potency. there honestly doesn't seem to be rules for or against...

No I have seen much worse min-maxed characters some even here.

As for allergies depending on back story I have characters with allergies to milk, sulfa drugs, and so on.

WMS

Fluff or canon are the expressed effects of the rules. They simply rationalise the rules for people to fit their preconceived notions into, at the heart of the fluff are the rules. It is the difference between OOC and IC.

Until Arsenal, there are no rules to create Awakened Drugs or Magical Compounds. Therefore in the absence of such, the only 2 RAW procurement methods of obtaining such is through a contact or the black market. Unless there are such rules in Unwired which I do not yet have.

I fail to see the issue with 35 BP in flaws. If roleplayed well they actually enrich the gaming experience. Take my orc ganger/sammie for instance:

Addiction (Novacoke/Mild) -5BP
Uneducated -20BP
Sinner (Criminal) -10BP

The addiction is easy. Like almost all addicts, this means that he's always carrying. In the store. On his bike. While getting pulled over by the cops. Always.

Uneducated means just that, not that they're stupid. They can use a commlink to make calls. They can surf porn. They can barely use e-mail functions. They can watch the trid on it.
Scan for frequencies? Use explosives if not specifically skilled? Answer a basic trivia question that most people would know? Heck, answer any sort of technical question? Enjoy the blank stare and the reply, "Man, I got nothin'..."
I love this one especially because I usually make a JOAT character so the other PCs are always asking my character technical stuff out of pure player reflex.

Sinner (Criminal). Looking like the orksploitation poster child is bad enough. Actually being the orksploitation poster child really sucks sometimes. You get pulled over a lot...while carrying Novacoke. And a Predator. As a known felon.
And the pigs always give you the same four options: Pay up, get arrested, get shot, or get your ass kicked.

Toturi has a very sophisticated practice of RPGs. I bet your get and and precision with thinking in general can benifit from respecting it.

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Also I really don't think anyone can complain about a melee character being broken, it just isn't that scary. I'd let just about anything fly it it was trying to make a melee character work.

You have to go out and forage for it in the wild. In this case it obviously involves swimming through kelp banks off the coast of Jamaica. Which basically means that everyone has to buy it unless they are Jamaica.

For the record, if a player wants to give their character an Allergy, I am okay with it. I just make sure the player knows they will definitely come up in play. Not so often to be ludicrous, but often enough to balance out the bonus BPs the character earns. As for Gold & Silver allergies, I would usually disallow these, unless a player has a good or interesting reason.

Why? They are canon allergies, and they are both things that the runner will run into every once in awhile. If nothing else, eventually their enemies will find out this potential weakness. And for some metatypes, they fit the old myths/legends. Also, allergies usually don't have a "reason" - incompetence, scorched, etc. I can see, but an allergy is usually something the character is born with.

I don't have a game rules reason - some allergies just feel wrong to me. Not a great answer, I know. Likewise, I won't let players take Incompetence in skills I know they will never ever use, like a Hacker who chooses Incompetence - Arcana.

That being said, I'd be fine with the allergy if they said something like this:
*My mage has had an aversion to silver, ever since he Awakened.
*Ever since my troll goblinized, the touch of cold iron has stung particularly harshly.

On the other hand, if I see an Allergy to Gold and I ask why and the player just says "Umm... because..." - I might disallow it.

gold/silver for hackers/technicians/electronics guys because the interior of most electronics(and in SR4, this includes your clothes and your weapons) has silver and gold in them

Well I can see that, I have a character a mystic adept who is incompetent with Binding.

Taking an incompetent with a skill that does not fit/affect the character is cheesing to me.

WMS

You know that one of the characters in the book as an example is allergic to gold right?

In other news, why does anyone care about people taking stupid allergies? I mean, you could be allergic to australia in my game for all I care. it's not really hurting anything.

For the record (as I have just had time to review the posts over the weekend), I never said I would punch you in the face or threatened you...

I simply said that if you were in my group, I'd punch you in the throat. Its a common joke around my table, when someone is doing something stupid, trying to get a questionable advantage or simply is doing something any of us don't like, we say we are going to throat-punch him to get him back in shape.

So, I was just joking with you, but I still maintain that if you told me that you didn't specialize in chargen so you could pick them up cheaper with karma, I'd give you a look, but then we'd move on. Its obviously min-maxi, but not the worst offense.

For the record you said you would punch me if I was in your group and posted here. That is pretty much the definition of a threat and there are many "common jokes around a table" that are inappropriate. I'd say your comment falls under that.

But hey, if you were joking no hard feelings. Sorry if I over reacted but some people on here were getting pretty harsh.

why?
if there's any game about a back-stabbing world, it is shadowrun *g*

I wouldn't take Dumpshock so personally. We have some absolutely hilarious flame-wars that span pages, challenges to Catalyst staff over content disagreements, the regularly posted experiences of ex-Infantry who have probably shot / been shot at, and medical tips from (if I'm not mistaken) both civilian and military paramedics. Welcome to the jungle!

Don't forget the occasional accountings of actual ex-criminals and those who 'got a little too rambunctious in their teens by way of breaking and entering and such'.

Someone talking about me again? Being a teenager is a confusing time and some of us have a little more fun with than others....

Hi, new here but I digress.

I quite liked my mage char's reasoning for allergy to silver. Basic backstory is kid abandoned in the wilderness, picked up by a community of shifters. Wolf Mage shifter's just had a litter, quickens toddler into a wolf cub and raises him with the others, makes for some interesting social accidents. Regardless, "Mum" is allergic to silver, "Mum" taught me magic, therefore I "think" I'm allergic to silver, and thus having my own magic, responding to my will..... I am.