OK, after much complaining about Runner's Companion, I've decided to show some of my personal tweaks. I'll start with a Quality that seems to come up as a point of irritation to all of my players when looking at advanced character options - Distinctive Style.

I like Distinctive Style, really. But, as written I think it's a little off both mechanically and in the all-or-nothing treatment given towards advanced character types. Here's my very minor tweak to make it work better for my game, and I figured I'd drop it here for the usual reason - to get insulted for not following RAW to offer it up for those that might like to try it.

Distinctive Style
Bonus: 5 to 15 BP
A character that takes this negative quality possesses at least one distinctive physical feature or unique mannerism (note that what qualifies as a Distinctive Style may vary from group to group; see the What is a Distinctive Style? Sidebar, p. 104). The quality may represent a unique look, a peculiar fashion sense, a trans- or non-metahuman modification, a unique speech pattern -- anything that makes the character inconveniently attention-grabbing and memorable.

Whatever type of flair the character selects, it must enable other individuals to easily remember him. Any individual who attempts to identify, trace or gain information about him via Legwork receives a +2 dice pool modifier on all tests made during such attempts. The modifier does not apply to astral or Matrix searches. This quality may be taken multiple times by characters that possess multiple distinctive features, with cumulative modifiers. However, the maximum cumulative modifier is +6 dice.

Many of the advanced character options in this book include Distinctive Style. Such characters do not get a BP bonus for any rating of Distinctive Style inherent to the character's type, but may elect to increase the rating (up to the maximum modifier of +6 dice) for the usual BP bonus.

It's a minor change, but it feels better to me than the original. Next I'll be playing with some of the advanced character options, starting with the metavariants.

Just as long as you rule that Naga's can't get shiva arms and satyr legs, you can go against RAW this one time.

Similar to my change. I would suggest altering it to "all attempts to identify, trace, or distinguish from others receive a +2 dice pool modifier".

There is no reason whatsoever that metallic hair makes an infiltrating character easier to spot; the bonus should not apply to perception tests made outside of picking a character out from the crowd. Distinctive Style only has an effect if they can see you, and then only to identify or trace (including Shadowing).

Good call on that. By RAW, Sprites have their Concealment power practically negated by their Distinctive Style and that's just downright stupid.

Here's my take on Trolls and the Troll metavariants. Note that the Impaired and Metagenetic Improvement traits are applied against 1/6 base Attribute values. All BPs add up the same as the base Troll metatype so they are interchangable on that scale. Yes, I am ware that my Trolls have a bit less starting and potential Strength and a bit more potential Charisma than the RAW versions, but it fits what I'm going for a bit better. They are still plenty strong.

Troll (Metatype)
+1 Reach
Custom Sizing Costs
Dermal Deposits
Impaired (Agility)
Impaired (Charisma)
Impaired (Intuition)
Impaired (Logic)
Metagenetic Improvement (Body) 4
Metagenetic Improvement (Strength) 3
Movement Rate 15/35
Thermographic Vision


Cyclops (Troll Metavariant)
+1 Reach
Custom Sizing Costs
Cyclopean Eye
Impaired (Agility)
Impaired (Charisma)
Impaired (Intuition)
Impaired (Logic)
Metagenetic Improvement (Body) 4
Metagenetic Improvement (Strength) 4
Movement Rate 15/35
Thermographic Vision

Fomori (Troll Metavariant)
+1 Reach
Arcane Arrester
Custom Sizing Costs
Impaired (Agility)
Impaired (Intuition)
Impaired (Logic)
Metagenetic Improvement (Body) 3
Metagenetic Improvement (Strength) 3
Movement Rate 15/35
Thermographic Vision

Giant (Troll Metavariant)
+1 Reach
Custom Sizing Costs
Dermal Alteration (Bark Skin)
Distinctive Style 1
Elongated Limbs
Impaired (Agility)
Impaired (Charisma)
Impaired (Intuition)
Impaired (Logic)
Metagenetic Improvement (Body) 4
Metagenetic Improvement (Strength) 3
Movement Rate 15/35
Thermographic Vision

Minotaur (Troll Metavariant)
+1 Reach
Custom Sizing Costs
Goring Horns
Impaired (Agility)
Impaired (Charisma)
Impaired (Intuition)
Impaired (Logic)
Metagenetic Improvement (Body) 4
Metagenetic Improvement (Strength) 3
Movement Rate 15/35
Thermographic Vision
Toughness
Unusual Hair

I've done a slight edit to the Minotaur, dropping Body back down to Troll-standard and adding Toughness. In the exchange I dropped the Poor Self-Control, which suits me fine as I don't like racial behavioral/psychological limiters too much (look forward to not having Vindictive be a hardwired feature of Hobgoblins).

Ork (Metatype)
Impaired (Charisma)
Impaired (Logic)
Low-Light Vision
Metagenetic Improvement (Body) 3
Metagenetic Improvement (Strength) 2
Movement Rate 10/25

Ogre removed to be updated in a newer post.

But what does that make the cost? Last time I ran the numbers on making Orcs via the Runners Companions rules they came out with a point value similar to AI's . . .

It costs whatever an Ork does in your game. For most games, this will be 20 BP.

I use the Karma Creation rules but I don't allow the cap on points spent for Attributes to be adjusted by metatype "cost" so I don't really need a BP value on them. I just use BPs in these rebuilds as a baseline in balancing metavariants to the base metatype.

Dwarf (Metatype)
Custom Sizing Costs
Impaired (Reaction)
Metagenetic Improvement (Body) 1
Metagenetic Improvement (Strength) 2
Metagenetic Improvement (Willpower) 1
Movement Rate 8/20
Resistance to Pathogens/Toxins
Thermographic Vision

Gnome (Dwarf Metavariant)
Arcane Arrester
Custom Sizing Costs
Impaired (Reaction)
Metagenetic Improvement (Body) 1
Metagenetic Improvement (Strength) 1
Metagenetic Improvement (Willpower) 2
Movement Rate 8/20
Neoteny

I haven't number crunched them all, yet, but here's one thing I will do: Ban the Day Job Flaw.

I've always banned the Day Job Flaw, and I will continue to do so. I freely admit it's because I, as a GM, have no idea how to cope with it. I can't tell if it's a flaw or an edge, because it gives you money. And if you really play up the time constraints, you end up with a player who's sitting on the sidelines, thinking "This sucks!" and eating pizza.

I allow the flaw, because the way I see it, the time generally isn't the big flaw, it's the attachments it gives you. Much like the dependents flaw, it gives you people who know about the normal you, see you every day, and can be used against you. Not only that it gives you a predictable pattern of movement (you will be here, likely unarmed or lightly armed, on these hours on these days, that kind of predictability is dangerous) and having the flaw means there is a good amount of up-to-date data about you somewhere.

Unless it's a matrix-only work-from-wherever job that allows you to pick your own hours.

The best application of the Day Job flaw is probably to make the character less available than the average PC (or unavailable!) when it comes to pre-run legwork and preparation. This makes it a big pain in the ass for Hacker and Investigator builds. The rest of the team is counting on them to help plan for the upcoming run--it's only two days away, and the clock is ticking--but they've got extremely limited time because their development studio is in crunch mode working on the next expansion pack for Rocky Mountain Avatar. As a GM, you can enforce the flaw by limiting the number of tasks the character can accomplish before the run, by assigning dice pool modifiers to an over-worked and under-rested character trying to pull "double shifts" (one legit shift at work and another "shadow shift" in the streets/on the Matrix), or both.

It works the same as any negative quality, really--if you don't enforce it, it amounts to free Build Points.

That presumes the character has the SINner edge, or at least a good fake one, for the job to be attached to. Then, when someone tracks you SIN, they can find out where you live and what you do. I've recommended that people take Dependents instead, with a tweak or two to make it work.



Many of those extended tests are measured in hours, not days. Availability tests for pricey gear and programming are the major ones I can think of, plus Spirit Binding. And, as far as programming goes, you can run your programming suite while you work your day job as a Microsquish tech. The same applies to most any job that's defined under what the character wants to do.

Also, you're presuming no Long Haul or Sleep Regulator, or even a Suprathyroid. Any or all of those could remove the need for sleep. Heck, addiction: stim patches can work-- I drink too much caffeine, so I'm up at this godsawful hour, playing on Dumpshock.


I'm not sure how to enforce it fairly. That's why I disallow it.

I think Day Job pretty much bans itself, for all intents and purposes, if the player can expect realistic enforcement of the quality. As we're discussing, being predictable, having ties to the legit world, and other stuff related to a regular job are extreme vulnerabilities for any shadowrunner.

Updating the Ogre with a nod to Shrek.

Ogre (Ork Metavariant)
Impaired (Agility)
Impaired (Charisma)
Impaired (Logic)
Low-Light Vision
Metagenetic Improvement (Body) 3
Metagenetic Improvement (Strength) 3
Movement Rate 10/25
Ogre Stomach
Reduced Sense (Smell)
Reduced Sense (Taste)
Scent Glands

Now the ogre is stonger (increased Strength) but more bulky (reduced Agility) and it has the characteristic unpleasant odor notable in Shrek. The pair of Reduced Sense negative qualities are actually a blessing among ogres, allowing them to largely ignore the odor of other ogres' Scent Glands and to eat just about anything when filling up that Ogre Stomach. Note that each Reduced Sense is pointed at the equivalent of 5 BP, which is half what hearing and vision would be, since metavariant/changeling-linked versions are neurological by default. I don't expect that this ogre will be too popular among players, but that's really the point - I only want it to be played by those that really want an unusual character, not merely an ork with the added benefit of a strong stomach and smooth skin (although it still has both of these features).

I enforced Day Job by making the character who had it take lots of Long Haul to get their hours in at work...

This looks almost exactly like the version we use. We keep Trolls (and Formori) at 10 Bod / 10 Str though, and have Giants at 11 / 11, Minotaurs at 11 / 10, and Cyclops at 10 / 11. We have the Ork baseline at 8 / 8 instead of 9 / 8 though.

Here's our list:

Did they ever clarify the karma gen rules that say that being a variant is both expensive and free? One paragraph says you pay twice the BP in Karma, the other paragraph says it's free and allows you to buy more stats....

You add twice the BP cost of your metatype to your attribute expenditure limit. That's what it says.

Until you get to the paragraph about 3 after that, where it says it doesn't cost anything, but you are supposed to keep track for step 3.

Playing a metatype costs nothing by itself. You increase the amount of karma you're allowed to spend on attributes by twice the BP cost of your metatype, though. Under the assumption that you need to cover the extra costs of increases in your good attributes.


Another way of saying it:

Let A be the amount of karma you spend on Attributes
Let L be your Attribute expenditure limit
Let K be your starting karma
Let M be the metatype cost in BPs

A <= L

L = 0.5K + 2M

We also tend to adjust the Karma costs, as follows:

Knowledge Skill - 1x new level (including first)
Active Skill - 2x new level (including first)
Skill Group - 5x new level (including first) if all skills are at same level; 3x new level if one skill in the group is already at or above the new level; 1x new level if two skills are both at or above the new level.
Attribute - 5x new level (up to racial base is free)
Attribute pair - 8x new level (Body-Strength / Agility-Reaction / Intuition-Logic / Charisma-Willpower) if both attributes are at the same level; x3 to raise the lower attribute if one is already higher than the other.

Race & Magic - 1x BP
Qualities - 2x BP
Gear, Nuyen & Lifestyle - 1 per 5,000¥

Maximum Expenditures:
Race & Magic - N/A (since you only pick one of each)
Attributes - 67%
Qualities - 5%
Skills - 50% (Skill max = 6; Skill group max = 4)
Gear - 10%

An 'average' character in this system costs 1,000 Karma, since Attributes are roughly twice as expensive.

I'm curious to know why these changes are being houseruled - I just got runner's companion and I've not run any of the variant character types yet.

You don't need to run something in game to know it's broken.

Wouldn't this be covered under SURGE Level 3 which costs 15 pts?

Positive would be 35 pts (Improved Metagenic Trait [Reaction], Balance Tail, and Satyr legs) and the negative would be 20 (Gene Freak, Unusual Hair, Impaired Attribute [Edge])

Normal SURGE III characters have to take 30 positive & 15 negative, the extra 5 is balanced out by the Impaired Edge. Even then the Edge is impaired too much.

Some of the options presented, such as infected, free spirits, and AIs, could potentially be unbalancing, but the metavariants don't seem broken to me. If anything, some of them are overpriced.

But house rules aren't only for "broken" things - GMs tweak build point costs and metatype traits to get them closer to how they envision them for their games (such as the ogre tweak to make ogres resemble Shrek more).

Yep! That is precisely how it was built. It's basically just a form of SURGE that breeds true, in the same way that the Nartaki are. Did the math come out wrong?

Unfortunately it did come out a little wrong.

SURGE level 3, which costs 15 pts, gives you 30 positive metagenic traits points and 15 negative metagenic traits points. Since your positive traits are 35, but your negatives are 20 that balances out, but you also have Edge two points less than baseline human.

Now one rank is easy (and covered), but two ranks is kinda harsh. That's most likely a 10 pt flaw* there because while the first one is cheaper, the second one hits a lot harder.

* = for the loss of the second point

It's not just single things, often it's a subtle combination that allows for huge abuses. I believe you were the one who pointed out that since metavariants are better than free under karmagen, a dryad Pornomancer becomes a game-breaking reality.

You're right that house rules are for more than fixing broken rules, but one purpose of them is to mitigate the effect of combinations that make the game no fun for everyone. I discovered that a social adept with Commanding Voice was not much fun, so we unanimously banned it. It wasn't that Commanding Voice itself was broken, it was that it made the game no fun.

I knew someone who had a champions character he'd give to players who complained that their characters were too weak. He had every stat and power in the game at 100 points zero endurance and skills at 26 or less on 3d6. (Except stretching, because that was too weird ). Enemies surrendered when he showed up, he solved the most baffling mysteries with effortless ease, the most powerful attack in the game bounced off him. All in all, he was incredibly boring to play.

Don't forget that you can't /heal/ while you're at work, so downtime for healing doesn't apply for that day, they can't get away with any kind of extended tests for that period of time, they don't have time to go out shopping, get gear fitted or repaired, or any of those other 'all day' activities, including initiating, having Cyberware installed, and others. If they lose the job, take out their lifestyle while they're being harassed by the company to repay their debts, reposess cyberware, and generally continue to track and harass them until they buy it off. Turn Day Job into a slightly less violent 'enemy' flaw.

If they "lose" their job, but are able to pay their lifestyle costs anyway, then you can't really take away their lifestyle. They can also refuse to go to work while healing, or doing other things. And many of the activities you list as "all day" are really only a few hours, or can be accomplished on the weekends.

One problem here is that if they lose the job, they get away scot-free. You can make them pay off the flaw; but if you do that, they'll still be earning the income until the karma is paid. It's a flaw that gives you money, after all. If you have to suffer part of the flaw until you pay it off, you have to suffer all of it-- or, in this case, get rich off of it.

But the biggest problem I have with the flaw is this: Sure, you can restrict a character's actions through use of the flaw. But that ends up punishing the *player*, since he is forced to sit on his thumb while others get spotlight time. No flaw should do that. That's simply not fun, and is part of the reason why I simply ban it rather than try to cope.

Personally, I allow Distinctive Style to add it's bonus to Matrix searches. Why? Google "sasquatch" and "metal spikes" and "machine gun" and you end up with just five hits. Google just sasquatch and you end up with two and three quarters million hits. I'm thinking that it would be slightly easier to find info on a specific metal-spiked machine-gun-wielding sasquatch than it would be to find information on a more ordinary dude.



Long haul and sleep regulator have their own drawbacks. Day job is a downtime management flaw, first and foremost. It directly limits the stuff that you can accomplish during downtime. Sleep reduction methods increase the around of stuff that you can do during downtime, so the two balance each other out if they're going that route. Remember that a dude with a sleep regulator and lots free time can do more than a guy with a sleep regulator and a 9 to 5 can.

Second, and most importantly, it is a plot hook flaw. I treat day jobs the same as enemies and contacts. I flesh out what the job is, why the character has the job, who the boss is, and the coworkers. This may just be minimal names and archtypes, or more. Either way, it gives the GM something to play with beyond the standard "your fixer calls with a job offer" . Maybe coworker Bob is being extorted and asks the PC for a favor that he just can't refuse or maybe the PC himself is targeted for an involuntary extraction because of his job skills and finds himself on the wrong end of a shadowrun.

And one thing to remember about the Day Job is that the PC cannot be fired. It is a flaw, meaning that it must be bought off with karma. If he comes into work late for the fifth day in a row, after missing two weeks because he was in a Panamanian POW camp, well that's just fine. The boss is never going to take him aside and tell him that he isn't right for the company and has to be let go. He could piss in the bosses coffee, while the boss is watching, and he wouldn't get fired. But, he can still be shat on, metaphorically, of course, though I suppose that they could also go so literally if it were that sort of job.

Consider, for a moment, all the ways that a boss can make a person's life hell. Pick three. Then, tell the player that his character's boss has imposed those sanctions on his habitually tardy character. It doesn't matter if you actually RP it or not and it doesn't matter if they have any in-game effect or not, if the player has a sufficient emotional investment in the character they'll still sting. And if he doesn't have sufficient emotional investment, you can always RP it.

On the most extreme side of things, you can turn it into Dilbert the RPG. Stat up all of his coworkers and hand teh character sheets to the other players with instructions to make the PC as miserable as possible throughout the simulated workday. It's cruel, but it's fun.

Does anyone know when/if they plan on putting out an errata to this book?

It's a job where you can play hooky for three weeks, and expect to not get fired. And until you pay off the karma, you continue to get a paycheck. You gain BP's and cash for taking the flaw, just like In Debt, except no one is going to come after you for not showing up at work.

That just makes the problem worse. I'm sure it might be fun, but now the stupid flaw gives the player extra spotlight time, instead of less. I don't stat up all the minor NPCs the other players encounter and force the other players to run them for their downtime bits, why should I single out one guy for special treatment?

The errata will be bundled with the PDF release of Shadows of Latin America.

That's the second monday after never?

One thing you can do is let them be fired. But in the same vein, that flaw gets replaced by a series of flaws that are appropriate for the character and situation. Wouldn't be the first time a flaw gets plreaced by something else due to in-game actions.

Flaws should help define, not benefit more than hinder you.

Elf (Metatype)
Low-Light Vision
Metagenetic Improvement (Agility) 1
Metagenetic Improvement (Charisma) 2
Movement Rate 10/25

Satyr (Elf Metavariant)
Impaired (Willpower)
Low-Light Vision
Metagenetic Improvement (Agility) 1
Metagenetic Improvement (Body) 1
Metagenetic Improvement (Charisma) 2
Movement Rate 15/37.5 (including modification from Satyr Legs)
Poor Self Control (Compulsive Lechery)
Satyr Legs
Unusual Hair
Vestigial Tail

Once again, I've decided to make a thematic change and thus my Satyr is not an Ork metavariant but is instead an Elf metavariant. The Unusual Hair describes what would be typical for a 'hairy human' - but in an Elf such body hair is quite unusual. The Satyr also has small horns, but these are entirely cosmetic. Despite these cosmetic oddities, a Satyr tends to be as attractive as a typical Elf. In my world, Satyrs are exclusively male and Dryads (which will also be modified) are exclusively female.