What is your reasoning behind this opinion?

I too would be interested to hear the reasoning... My philosophy is what is good for the goose is good for the gander... though I would not use this overmuch, it would still be a viable option...

I believe neither PC'S nor NPC's should be permitted to burn edge.
This whole 1up aspect of it is pretty sucky and only promotes suicidal behaviour.

Though not supported by RAW, your view is certainly your choice... Mileage varies on the suicidal rate in our game... it is generally used to compensate for a generally poor outcome that should not have happened (the critical glitch that kills you for no other reason than because you failed a roll)... Generally, in my experience... a good death in shadowrun is just that... a Good Death... and we generally leave it at that... but sometimes, the death is just lame and begs to be compensated for... Not that there are not other consequences, but them are the breaks...

YMMV

Because in the case of NPC's, it's an infinite resource they're burning. In the case of PC's, it's karma. You're essentially forcing the PC's to burn karma, while you waste nothing.

Not that long ago, I was in a game facing a Nataki with an Edge of 8. He burned Edge on critical successes on the attack, forcing us to burn back or die. He also burned Edge on critical successes on soak rolls, making it impossible to hurt him. It wasn't until the pet NPC's came in that we were able to kill him.

That was, IMO, amongst the worst GM cheese possible. The only answer to a NPC burning Edge is for a PC to burn Edge right back. You, as a GM, have infinite karma to throw around. The PC's do not. It's cheese to force the PC's to waste their karma like that. The GM can throw more karma at a NPC. It's like throwing a 10,000 karma NPC at a team: it's just not fair at best, and GM cheese at worst.

This is an example of very poor GMing... The story should be about the Player characters... if you want to tell a story about Pet NPC's... Write A Book.




Gouda.....

This is exactly why I would NEVER allow the burning of Edge for a Soak of Damage (for NPC's or PC's)... This is Completely broken in this regard... you wanna burn Edge to Survive... Fine, you still take enough damage to put you down... eventually you will regain consciousness... somewhere... It might be on your own terms (your team helped you out) or it might not be, but you are alive... But you will never use edge to just NOT TAKE DAMAGE...

Rant Over...

I second this

I understand your distaste for the situation you describe, and I agree that forcing PCs to burn Edge because the NPCs continually do so is wrong.

However, the situation we are discussing here is one in which a PC chooses to burn Edge first to do something impossible or next to impossible, and the results of which action include extreme imbalance in play and destruction of fun in the game. If I recall correctly, you have argued vociferously elsewhere against such behaviour by players (as well as GMs). Yet here is presented a way to warn against / prevent players from cheesing the game, using a mechanic that fits the fluff, fits the RAW and is fair.

I don't understand why you don't like it. It is a response to a player trying to be "too big for his britches", not a demand for the player to throw away his karma. No one is forcing the player to have his PC summon a Force gajillion spirit. If he does so, and dies for it, it is in fact a Good Death as far as the game and the SR world go. A player seeking the limits to which her PC can push her luck would be a fascinating and exciting side plot to a campaign. Protecting her from the consequences of overreaching herself only invites further abuse of the game, the rules and her teammates.

Would make for a good story though, with an NPC of course.

The players have to stop a lunatic mage who has found a way to sacrifice the souls (and edge) of others to summon a titanically powerful great form spirit. What's worse, the mage is possession tradition with channeling, with the end goal of setting him/herself up as a living god.

They track the mage and cult deep into the arctic circle, where the mass suicide & summoning ritual is to occur.

Burning edge is a tangent here, but how would everyone react if a PC burns a (now slightly more expensive) ressource in order to kill that mega-enemy?

Even at lowish edge scores, you are giving away the karma reward for at least one run, likely more, to succeed at an ingame task. One-shot characters may be different, but I consider any run were that happens "mission accomplished". The player in question is sufficiently motivated to go for mechanically inefficient choices.

*yoink*
lil bit of adapatation and that's gonna fit quite nicely! TY!!

I normally use a screen for rolls, so i can cheat a bit to keep players alive who just happen to have bad luck.
The ability to survive virtually anything by spending some karma just causes things like that binding mentioned above.

isn't this more or less what blood magic and the sacrifice metamagic tech are all about? O.o
Main Problem i see with this luck attribute, is players KNOWING how much they have . .
a Human can start out with 7 edge max, that means 7 times certain death.
it's been mentioned in hitchhikers guide to the galaxy in a fitting way:"if you have done 6 impossible things before breakfast alone, then why not do the seventh impossible thing and take your breakfast at milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe and be back before you left?"
Rolling those Edge dice to accomplish something, i can live with . .
just saying:"i will get rid of this one and do x and i fucking succeed no matter the consequences" is just wrong.
Long-Shot rules may allow you to roll up to 7 dice on a test where you would have, due to circumstances, -50 to your usual dice pool . . but it's still rolling dice.
so luck while using luck. you can roll well and have luck and accomplish whatever it was, or you have no luck while rolling your lucky dice while using your luck attribute.
so you fuck up and don't succeed . . that is luck, that can happen with or without edge attribute at whatever occassion you are rolling dice at.

Yeah basically, but the way I read Sacrifice it's directed at a single target as opposed to a whole cult of people at once. So maybe an advanced metamagic technique, with sacrifice as a pre-requisite.

Santa Claus has gone rogue, and is sacrificing his elves to become Shiva, the Destroyer.

Mostly because Pc's have a finite edge pool, NPC's have an infinite edge pool, ie an unlimited number of NPC's

Given the reasons for burning edge, it should be impossible to kill an NPC until they run out of edge cause they'd just keep burning it to make their dodge rolls, or soak rolls with. Any and every assassination attempt would fail because the NPC would just burn edge, get enough successes ignore the damage completely.
I kinda have a bit of an issue with that.
Because there is NO reason for them not to if it is a life and death matter for them, they ALWAYS should if able.
And that would be irritating in the extreme.

If your character REALLY wants them dead. Like they murdered your whole family kinda dead, then I'd let them go for it, so long as the story won't suffer for it.

Basically, I think anytime a GM burns Edge like this is cheese. The mechanic doesn't fit the fluff, and it's not fair. With the exception of Hand of God (which is a totally other mechanic), NPCs have no business burning Edge. You're only doing it because the PC *succeeded* in conjuring a spirit bigger than you can handle. Rather than let his karma go to waste, you should figure out a way of dealing with the spirit. In my case, a honest discussion with the player solved matters.

A player should get *something* for burning Edge, and not a thumb to the nose as the NPC burns Edge right back.


See my post above. Something like that actually happened.

I believe that in Shadowrun as in other games and as in real life, there are things one should not try because they are too difficult, too dangerous ... too stupid. If a player has a 'succeed no matter how stupid' card to play, then the aspect of game play that involves judgment is eliminated. Some actions deserve a Thor shot.



Yes, honest discussion between player and GM, before game play begins, or at least before certain actions are undertaken, to outline parameters and consequences and develop a cooperative approach to game play is greatly to be desired. As a GM, I would caution a player that if his magician tries to summon a really high Force spirit, he will have a really high Force snit to deal with. All magicians should know this from Summoning 101, even if their players do not. I would do this before the dice are rolled. If the player continued in that course of action, then I would play the spirit according to what I and others believe is the right way. And yes, there is judgment involved in determining what constitutes a too high Force spirit. That too can be talked over before the dice are rolled.

This is simply a matter of natural consequences. I don't see any need as GM to contest with the players. The GM has ultimate power over the whole universe. The GM wins... if he wants to. What's the fun in that? I get my kicks GMing by seeing the satisfied, exhausted, begging-for-more looks on the faces of the players at the end of the session. You don't get that from smashing their PCs with overwhelming force. You do get it, in part, by making a world in which they can lose if they play stupidly, arrogantly, carelessly.

And if someday they were able to grow in skill and power to the point where they could summon a Force 16 spirit legitimately, I would be proud of them as if they were my own children.

You must really hate the Escape Certain Death clause, then.

Considering that my player legitimately summoned and bound that Force 16 spirit, without burning Edge, there was no call for me to suddenly have the spirit burn Edge to get away. He scored a critical success on the summoning test, too. But to be perfectly clear: while he spent Edge like there was no tomorrow, he did not burn any.

But even if he had burned Edge, there would be no call for the spirit to burn Edge right back. I cannot emphasize this enough: he treated his spirits well, and even had Spirit Affinity for they type in question. Furthermore, you only burn Edge when you know you haven't scored a critical success. So, the only time I could call for an Edge burn would be *after* he had succeeded. That's just cheap and wrong. He's made his roll, spent his karma, he should get a fair reward.

Having an NPC burn edge to stay alive is not reasonable, unless you really want the NPC to come back later. Even then, it should be the end of the combat. If a lucky shot takes out a recurring villain, the GM should have a recourse to have them survive.

If my players decide to burn edge to deliberately screw up my carefully constructed plot they ruin my fun, and the fun of the other players, since I have to then ad lib things, which makes it hard to consider all the angles, and weakening the whole game. In such a circumstance I see no reason not to burn my infinite gm edge to push things in the direction I want to go. Similarly I see no reason to allow a PC to burn edge in a non-stressful situation, simply to succeed at some task they othewise would have no hope for (eg. Summoning and binding a high force spirit without rolling, or sourcing a cyborg body and brain jar, or electively implanting the street sam into said CCU, and having the aforementioned spirit possess the combined entity). That's an abuse of the system.

Damnit, now you've gone and ruined the deliberately vague wording on it
and yes, im serious.. but less shiva.

No, particularly as it is explained in SR4A, as the character suffers major consequences for their actions, or the actions visited upon them.



The issue I have is not with the character being successful, it is with the player attempting to sneak past the laws of physics (or whatever other frame of reference is in effect) in order to avoid consequences for his actions, AND expecting that only he has the right to do so. If gauss rifles are available to characters, they are available to NPCs as well. If burning Edge is available to characters, it is available to spirits as well.

In the scenario you describe above, I would not use Edge to respond to the character's phenomenal success in a Summoning (also Binding?). Not just because of his treatment of spirits in general or the Spirit Affinity bonus. A Force 16 spirit has mental stats higher than a Great Dragon. He may be pissed of at being sucked away from his card game by a piddly little metahuman (Cute though he may be!), and at the same time willing to put up with the inconvenience because it is only temporary. He KNOWS that if this arrogant little shit keeps up this act, sooner or later his face will melt off from the Drain. And that will be very satisfying.

The burning of Edge, whatever metaphysical effect it represents, is something the spirit should be aware of, if for no other reason than the spirit-summoner link. Even if the spirit doesn't burn Edge to resist the first summoning, that 16 LOG and 16 INT will instantly understand that permanent servitude will ensue if the metahuman continues to burn Edge to enthrall the spirit. And it could be permanent because the summoner can rebuild Edge. Even if you argue the spirit should not be able to perceive the burning of Edge, it will be able to assess the capabilities of the summoner and his tools to a very fine degree. "Wait a minute. Why is this little shit continually surviving something that should be burning him away?"

It would appear to me that you are suggesting that an entity with a personality and intelligence more forceful than Lofwyr's would put up with the possibility of an INSECT bossing it around forever, refraining from freeing itself from servitude because it isn't 'fair' to fight back with all its powers.

How does that make sense to you?

Quick and easy change to bring edge back to a reasonable level for NPCs:

Only named reoccurring NPCs have edge.

Dragons (all) have edge because they're fucking dragons and should be major NPCs, if not reoccurring ones.

If you need edge on your mook NPCs, then they only get the two common uses of edge: adding to a die pool and rerolling failures. The amount of edge they have is limited by their critter section in the book, or to 4 for metahumans.

I don't know what to say about spirits. An Edge equal to force is just stupidly high.

Fragging dragons, pleas.

Touche.

Fixed your error.

So, let me get this clear: there is *no way* a force 16 spirit will treat a PC, no matter how they roleplay or what their stats are, as anything but an "arrogant little s**t"?


That doesn't change the fact that having the spirit burn Edge is CHEESE. Any NPC burning Edge is GM cheese of the worst order. You can try and justify it however you like, it's cheating and it's not right. I mean, a NPC about to die should burn Edge on a soak roll to survive, right? That's exactly the same thing. It's not fair, it's not right, and it is cheating.

To me it makes sense the spirit if it were that pissed would do something like ask another spirit, or dragon or other such force to have "words" with the summoner, and let them know if they keep pissing on people in high places a force 36 power ball could visited upon them in the near future.
If the player keeps pissing off the spirit after that friendly warning, then TPTB should just nuke the character by materializing from the deep astral into his bedroom one night.

See, Im with Cain on this one to be honest. Mechanically, my lil shaman runs around pulling F10+ spirits out as a matter of course (though not binding them) simply to keep up with the rest of the team, and to date has failed his drain roll once. Sure, he has 1 maybe 2 favours out of each, sometimes gets lucky and has 4 or 5, but he's still able to do it.

But even though he *can* call them willy nilly, he's not stupid enough to do anything but treat them with the utmost respect. These aren't the guys you wanna piss off, so if you want someone to cleanup on isle 12.. don't be calling these guys. He only uses them in their appropriate tasks, and is probably more touchy about what the spirit gets used for than the spirit itself (he's outright refused to send the spirit on some tasks the party decided he would be best fit for.. which he was, but it's beneath such a thing and demeaning). With things like spirit affinity, a high charisma and properly rp'd interaction with the spirit as it's own personality in it's own right, not treating it as nothing more than a random "gopher", i don't see the problem.

And did you say bound spirit? Just to check though as im having a mental blank and don't have my books on me, don't bound spirits need to me made from a formulae that effectively creates the spirit itself right? and if so, said spirit is effectively newborn (but not a retard) but may also view the designer of the spirit formulae with a posible parent figure and attach themselves to them in much the same manner as an orphan clinging desperately to the kind and nurturing person who brought it into existence?

.. either that or i'vehad way to much to .. erm.. drink, and i should just give up now.

They also are ignoring how spirits summoned by different traditions act differently.


And while it's an odd example, how about Psionic tradition? A Psionic doesn't summon spirits, they create "thought constructs".


That's one example of how you can't simply put a single definition on how spirits act, they're designed to be the complete opposite of being easily defined.

Cute.


Nope. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I am saying is there is some boundary -- a difficult to define and highly nebulous boundary, I admit -- beyond which the burning of Edge by a player to achieve something his character should not be able to do is an aberration of the rules and of the spirit of the game. Saying -no- NPC is able to resist such behaviour is ... nega-cheese. Let me give an example.

Without the right of spirits to spend Edge, immediately out of chargen a mage with Magic 6 and Edge of 4 or more can summon and bind a Force 12 spirit with at least 8 services (depending on how you interpret 'net successes') by burning Edge on each Test and on the subsequent Drain resistance. With judicious use of the spirit's powers, the PC, among many various uses for this powerful resource, for all intents and purposes doubles his 'escape death' chances, without the concomittent downtime and other consequences. And he can earn it all back and do it to the spirit some more.

You argue that if the PC wants to sacrifice the 40 BP he spent on the Edge to get the spirit, he deserves it. He bought and paid for it in 'blood and karma'. I argue a) that the spirit deserves the same laws of physics and metaphysics that apply to the PC, b) spirits with LOG 12 are not stupid, and c) the PC should recognize his limits and expect consequences for poking a stick into a nest of killer bees.

Edge only for PCs is cheese of the highest order. There is that other game, the one that causes cancer, for players who want that kind of guarantee.

Survive because of the 'escape death' roll does not mean stand up right away and start shooting again. The NPC is out of play just as a PC with that use of Edge.

Neither of those has the slightest thing to do with Edge.

Then don't use Escape Certain Death. Burn Edge for a critical success on your soak roll, reducing those 20 hp from the gauss rifle to nothing. It happened in the situation I described: I massively overcast a direct combat spell, scored over eighteen successes thanks to exploding dice, nearly killed myself from the drain, and had it all wiped out when the NPC burned a single point of Edge. He was still up, fighting, and completely uninjured.


I'm arguing rules and rules balance. You're arguing fluff. But in either case, it's still GM cheese to burn Edge. The fluff might support it, but fair game play does not.


Burning Edge is indeed a PC-only sort of thing. Otherwise, we'd have every grunt and ganger burning Edge to survive, burning Edge to kill the PC's, and so on. All the opposition the PCs face should be smart enough to burn Edge on their soak rolls, enabling them to escape without injury.

1. The game is about the players, not the NPCs.

2. Burning edge because your players burned edge is very bad form. It's an abuse of power. Now, allowing the cool NPC to burn edge and survive having a building dumped on him (for example) by the PCs is all right. Hey, they didn't find a body, right?

3. You're forgetting something. Spirits don't regain karma. If the mage burns edge he can earn more karma and buy his edge back. If the spirit burns edge, he has to make a pact with a mortal to regain that karma.

That's Hand of God, which operates on a different principle. Hand of God is for NPC's. Escape Death is for PC's. So, different character types have different uses of Edge that's fair and legal.

Bound spirits are simply normal summoned spirits that have had a ritual performed on them to make them stay around until all of their services are exhausted rather than expire at sunrise/sunset.

You are thinking of Ally Spirits in the quoted text above.

Under SR4 rules, you can have up to CHA bound spirits and only 1 unbound spirit at any given time.

I don't think magic is game-breaking, though I've seen magic break a game.

For me, there can't be anything broken in a game with a consistent world. If something is very powerful, there will be things to counter it (for example body armor against bullets). If it can't be countered (for example the easy decryption), then it becomes a part of the game universe and it will shape the world some way that'll make it not so problematic, hence not broken.

But there will still be GM out there to forget about magic counter-measures and magic will break their games.

I disagree. Sometimes there are no countermeasures, and it shapes the world in a problematic fashion. Grounding was one example of this.

Then the world can't exist coherently. That's why I specifically said "in a game with a consistent world".

If the PC actually abuses the spirit, I might be inclined to agree, however I do not believe that 'burning' edge should be an option to NPC's because there is no logical reason for them not to, to suceede on EVERY potentially dangerous soak role, rendering them invulnerable until they have run out of edge.
Also they have just blown a very large amount of Karma to pull this little trick off, and desirve to get some gain for their troubles. 8 services is really not that much, and if the PC starts pissing the spirit off, its likely going to consider anything asked of it a service. But depending on the tradition of the spirit, it may take different actions on the PC's part to either keep it happy or anger it, or the spirit may simply NOT have those concepts.


Really, so what do you do to cripple your ability to use edge against PC's then?
If every NPC has it, then every NPC should use it for the reasons stated in the book, like not dying. So if your sniper using a barret shoots a security guard in the head with an AV around and a +4 called shot, then the guard burns edge, resists the damage, and returns fire as he suddenly stopped because he saw a penny on the ground and the bullet merely trimmed his bangs as opposed to penetrating his cortex. Its perfectly legal, and the most logical way for that NPC to spend its edge during this encounter. And as you demand, since it is an option available to PC's it MUST be avaialable to NPC's.

Right you are, cheers for the clarification, knew i wasn't quite right.

Just to constructively add to the thread, i *do* believe magic is broken, but to be honest, it's broken the other way. Huh? you say? here's why

Where's our positive TN bonus's for spells that aren't cyber based?
We have tons of negatives, and my mages average TN is 8+ (on a d6), with the only reasonable way to get successes on casts being to throw more dice at it. Being the only spellslinger in my party, i had to ramp the bejeebus out of my shammy just to keep up with the rest of the party. Im slower, much less strength and body, no matrix access, poor firearms skills, poor melee skills. lower reaction, initiative, lower *everything* except direct magic and willpower. The rest of the party are all mundanes, and im hardpressed to keep up with them in full flight. What they can do with a simple press of a finger takes my character twice as long, and requires LOS to boot - unlike indirect fire weapons, smartlinks, drones, or anything else along those lines. So my little shaman, that was created to be a magical monster, finds nearly every action he takes with magic to be extremely difficult, but *every single other member on the team* can do similar things (non magical ofc.) with an avg. TN of 2.
Balanced? yeah, right.

The only thing mages can really do to offset the direct, immediate capabilites of the average sam is too either quicken or sustain a bunch of inc. attrib. spells on themselves before they even poke their head out the door, then pray they get the jump and hope they have LOS. Yes, ritual magic can offset that to some degree, but you still need a sample of the target to be able to target them, and then you have both the massive time commitment as well as a static location you need to defend while your otherwise occupied, neither of which are all that fantastic, and would have been much more easily dealt with if you just let the phys ad gun bunny with richochet take the target down with a single shot, instead of the long winded rigamarole you need to go thru commonly to do the same on a mage (if no direct LOS). Now if you *do* have LOS, the mage can then do soem great things.. but once more, much more easily sorted with a single well placed bullet from the overpowered hand cannons the sams are running around with. Not to mention that that called shot to the head from extreme distance *still* quite commonly has a lower (or equal at max) TN than the F8 powerbolt the mage is trying to cast at em.

But no, magics broken, mages are OP an they get fantastic mileage for the karma expenditure.. lol.

In SR3, centering vs. penalties could make up for that TN difference in a hurry.

Noandno. If the mage is breaking the game, or anyone else is, the GM is not doing his job. Shadowrun is easy to break.

First... let me just say that 8 services from a Force 16 (or whatever High Force we were talking about) Spirit is HUGE...

Secondly...
Edge use for NPC's is not as clear cut as you want to make it. NPC's are indeed a lot like PC's in that they tend to spend edge just as PC's do... for the many varied and useful applications of edge...

Additionally, a lot of opponents do not have their own edge but Group Edge... again, they use it up rather fast to do such nefarious things as negate a glitch or critical glitch, allow a reroll to avoid getting hit, etc... pretty much what I would do for the majority of my uses of edge... I have never seen a character actually burn edge for a critical success (wishing that it was actually not even allowed, but hey, since it is, all types of characters should be able to take advantage of it), though they could of course do so... I have seen a PC Burn edge to survive certain death, but there are always consequences to this approach in the game (our campaign at least), as I have outlined in an earlier post...

What is SO WRONG about the odd NPC Burning Edge to survive (I am obviously arguing agains the "Unlimited" expenditure of Edge that so many have put forth earlier)... I submit that it will be more common for the NPC's to spend their edge like those us lowly PC's do, and that permanent burning of edge will be rare...

Just my two cents...




I think that you are being specious here... again, If the character (NPC) is an important one and you absolutely MUST keep him available for later plots, then burn the edge and move on, but always make sure that there is a consequence for doing so... such as not purchasing any more edge for this NPC... thus a Finite supply of edge...

If is not an important NPC, let him attempt to beat fate by spending edge for the myriad reasons/effects that can be generated, just like the rest of us... success is its own reward in this regard...

It seams like you are just being difficult, for no real reason...

Thanks for letting me rant a little

My Two Cents

Yep, and if the spirit demands a service to even interact with the player because they've pissed it off, guess how fast they fly out the window.
It also means the PC would have a magic of atleast 8, which means they should be pretty cool in their own right.


Because the rules permit the burning of edge by NPC's to negate the damage competely by getting a critial success on the soak roll. There is NO logical reason for them not to do it in a life or death situation. To my knowledge they can a) spend edge to try and avoid the attack, and then burn it to soak the damage if they failed.



No real reason... ok, interesting definition of "no real reason", but whatever...

I'll say it again, plot important/special NPCs burning edge for 'hand of god' survival is fine. NPCs burning edge for critical successes is an abuse of GM power. Period. Is it by the letter legal? Yes. But so is creating your own great dragon or immortal elf with godlike stats and powers, and then have them kill your players. I, for one, would be walking out of the game moments after you answered the question, "Are you serious?"

Make as many statements about how it's legal, and how you think that NPCs should be given the same options as players as you want. It's a matter of fairness.

PCs edge is paid for with karma and build points. They build their character with these points, and the play the game to earn more points. NPCs are pulled from the GM's rear end fully formed. In this case, we're talking about a NPC that will exist for only the moment of summoning (assuming that he isn't summoned). Rather, you should point to the book:



This would indicate that you are supposed to burn edge only in a drastic situation. Simply tell the player that burning edge is for 'emergency' use only, and not for them whipping up a new friend.

Because even in a limited situation, it takes the fun away from the players. There's no thrill in overcasting a spell, or scoring a critical success on an attack roll, if the other guy is just going to negate it by burning the Edge he didn't pay for.

This thread has become an attempt to convince Cain that the GM has what-ever right he or she wants to run his or her story the way they want. Likewise, Cain and his supporters are arguing that the game belongs to the players and that what benefits them is what the game is about.

As you can tell by the statements above, I have a bias.

Cain should be able to play his game the way he wants. Period. He plopped down the cash or whatever to get the books, think of the concepts, and put them into the rules. Golden RPG rule # 1:If a rule offends the, pluck it out(sic). Don't like how it works change it.

By that token, good luck finding a GM who will run for you. I'm sure there are plenty out there. But just as you have a right to play as you wish, everyone else also has the same right. As everyone has the right to refuse to play at a table with someone who doesn't share the same Mythos view as them. Golden RPG rule # 2: No GM has to play with any player, and No player has to play with any GM or player.

So, yes, by the rules of the BBB, all of your actions are legal and above board, and I will defend them to the hilt. But bragging about them (and I feel that flouting big numbers is, infact, bragging, even if you vcan back them up) will not get you the respect, I believe you are looking for. And I believe you are looking for respect or else you would have dropped the matter yourself long ago.

Cain. Buddy. Let them go. They'll not come around. They are cut from different cloth. Suffer those arrows of outragous fortune, and be the nobler man. Your big numbers are how you play, have fun. But, let it go. I'm sorry, you're not proving anything.

Meanwhile.....

Gm's run their games to run their games. If you (not necessarily Cain) want to play with a certain set of rules, you will have to run. Otherwise, be prepared to suffer at the hands of another mortal. If GM says, it goes. Book says different, who cares. Agrue long enough, and you'll be asked to leave. I have kicked people out of my game because they did not wish to conform to my vision of the story. Likewise, I have left tables where I couldn't get into the rythm of the game and I was causing a disruption. I like to think of myself as a fair GM, if not a fair man, but when I run a game; I'm running the show.

GM(me): Well, it looks like you dropped the MacGuffin while swimming back to the boat.
Player: I burn an edge to make it an automatic success.
GM(me):Yeah...wow....A near by fish burns edge and it drops.
Player: What!?! Thats retarded!
GM(me): your right....no fish. It drops because I say so. Keep your edge.

If the player argues after that, wasted breath. I need the MacGuffin at the bottom of that lake. The Edge attribute is sometimes called the favor of the gods, but sometimes the gods have plans that are counter to yours. Such is drama.

Yea, I have not read the rules for "Escape Certain Death" in a while but I don't recall it ever saying that the individual never gets injured... Just that they don't die. What you describe above should have been the N/PC in question takes enough damage to fall unconscious and is out of combat after that. He looks dead so (metagaming aside) everyone else leaves him alone.
If NPC's can't use edge how do you have reoccurring villains? "I thought we killed that guy!?" "And now he has a PAC!"

Who said he didn't pay for it? NPC's are made like everyone else. (To some extent)
Most GM's I know make NPC's with BP/Karma in line with the team they are supposed to face. I do in the games I run. Just because it is an NPC does not mean that in the fictional world that is SR that person didn't grow up and find (or have forced on them) their path in life. (other than spirits)