Actually, I do not think it is a player problem or even excessive exploitation of the rules. I think it is a GM problem and such usage of the rules should be encouraged.

I'm in agreement with toturi on this one, except that I'd go so far as to argue that it's pretty darn tough to really get ahead with the Sensitive System quality. Yeah, sure, you'll have more points available than if you just went with no cyberware at all and skipped the flaw, but in my experience skipping cyberware entirely isn't really what it's cracked up to be anyway. Frankly, it takes a real effort for me to resist the urge to slap at least some cybereyes into every mage I make.

I find it tough to resist the urge to slap in a nanohive and O-cells into every character, Awakened or not.

Toturi is right, it's up to the GM to balance the flaw. If they can't, that's not a sign of a weak GM, but it is a place where you're going to have to come clean with your players.

For example, I despise the Day Job flaw. I cannot balance it out, no matter how hard I try. I've come to the point where that if a player tries and take it, I'll sit down with them and try and figure out an acceptable alternative. Usually it's not hard.

No, that's not a valid set of negative qualities by RAW. Scorched and Sensitive Neural Structure are only 5 points each, unless you are a hacker. The rules are explicit on this point. Not "I could be a hacker, eventually, if I wanted to" - the character must actually be a hacker to get the higher amount of BPs for the flaw. So unless that mage actually has a more than token amount of skills put into hacking, the character would only get 25 points for that combination, not 35.

Nice try. Was that a 'strawman'? It's been a long time since debate class.

Here's my assertion: Negative Qualities are intended to give the character a limitation or disadvantage in exchange for more points to spend on abilities or advantages.

For most archtypes in Shadowrun, Sensitive System is a major sacrifice, which explains why it is worth 15 points. For some archtypes, it is a minor inconvenience, if it even comes into play at all. If the character is playing an archtype where it is not a sacrifice, it should not be worth 15 points. It is.

The question that I raise is, do I have sufficient cause to implement some house rules if I feel a rule is being exploited? I say that in my game, I always have the right to implement house rules in the name of making the game more fun for myself and the players. Contest that if you like.

Given that:

A. The Negative Quality may not impact every player equally
B. The Negative Quality is worth a significant amount of points

It might appear that the simple solution is to either remove the Quality from my game, or to give it a graduated cost based on archtype, similar to how Allergy is handled. I think it's a good quality, and I'd like to keep it, and as has been pointed out not all casters are cyber-phobic.

Cheshyr's suggestion is elegant. In my games, only cyborgs may take a Sensitive System. Nobody here has convinced me that there's a good reason to allow it otherwise.



Okay, not to pick fights, but what does that mean exactly?

How do you tell a hacker from a guy with an overpowered commlink in this edition, anyway?

I would simply ask a couple of questions to this:

First, are those 15 points *really* breaking the fun for you and/or your players? If 15 points are that big of a deal, maybe there are other underlying issues you need to look at.

Second, over the course of a campaign, how much are those 15 points really bringing to the table? Again, is it that much of a problem?

If it really is a gamebreaker for you and your group, then by all rights and means, ban, change or limit it as you need. That's the prerogative of every GM, and not something a single person on this board can reasonably argue against unless they are strict RAW adherents to the point of fanaticism. (not an overly bad thing, of course... everyone needs a cause)

Only 25 then, for flaws that will never see the light of day. I'm certain I can find 10 more points of flaws that will be equally untouched. Even if I can't, 25BP isn't insignficant. This same run-around could be used with Cursed and Reduced Sense (Astral Sight) by a Street Sam. There are certain qualities where the developers didn't explicitly call out the limitations required for them to have an impact on the game. If a GM wants to allow freebie points like this, it's his perogative. There are those that don't that are looking for reasonable compromises to allow them to work with the player without it just being 'because I said so'.

And no, in the long run, 15 points isn't that big of a deal. It's only about 6 runs worth of Karma. This isn't entirely about game-breaking qualities... it's about encouraging the characters to make well rounded, interesting characters, starting with a level playing field and fixed amount of recources. If that's not really important to you, you could just tell the players "You have anywhere from 365 to 435 BP to use to create your character. Have fun."

This may be appropriate for your campaign. Again, GMs call.

Exactly as it says? Like Cain said, it is up to the GM to enforce the Negative Quality.

Sensitive System, for example, makes you pay through the nose for the useful cybernetics that do not have a magical counterpart. In essense(forgive the pun), he is cut off from having those cyber. You may think that you should not have Sensitive System unless you have cyber but the problem is that with Sensitive System and if you do want quite a bit of cyber, you are essentially shooting yourself in the head, it is quite suicidal to take Sensitive System and try to implant a basic Rating 2 wired reflexes. My take is that Sensitive System is precisely there to provide points to non-cyber characters. Then when they do find that they want a cyber implant, they have to weigh the pros and cons very carefully indeed.

Sensitive System doesn't impact Bioware. If you've got a Bioware heavy player with Sensitive System, you've got a rational character concept. If they decide to add cyberware later, and their bioware essence costs are greater than their cyberware essence costs, the cyberware is 50% essence cost. Sensitive System would make this 100% again... so those Cybereyes or wired reflexes would go back to normal essence cost. There are situations where the flaw makes sense, and adds depth.

And then there are examples like this that seem positively ludicrous to me... Apples and Oranges... the Drawback has absolutely no real detrimental effect in the above example and you have a "freebie" Negative Quality... Using that argument, the guy with all the Bioware never buys cyberware... is he now "cheating" to get those 15 freebie poiints?

Keep the Faith

I'd personally consider just giving my players 35 extra BP. Really, players who don't want to have actual disadvantages will be allergic to stuff they don't care about, and players that do don't need to be nerfed for no reason.

Seriously, there is literally no viable character archtype for which sensitive system is ever going to be a material disadvantage.

Any sammie would have to be mad to take it, mages can minimise the impact and faces/riggers are not impacted materially.

Heh... yeah, I'd say he was. Hence why I suggested the 'If you want it, buy some cyberware first' limitation on Sensitive System. It was a suggested check-and-balance to make sure a flaw the GM has no in-game influence over has some effect on gameplay. And it does have a significant impact... without the flaw, the guy might not have purcahsed the ridiculously expensive bioware in the first place.

What is it everyone here says?.. YMMV.

So? In the first place if he didn't have the Sensitive System, he would have a 50% reduction in Essense costs and that kind of reduction is comparable to having Delta Grade. So he trades off the 50% essense to his cyber for the 15 BPs of Sensitive System. I would think that that is a bad trade and a stupid move unless that piece of cyber is absolutely essential to his continued survival.

Sensitive system is only one of many negative qualities that fall under "lateral limitations", flaws that might not affect your initial character concept, but limit ways in which that character can improve. With hard-wired limits that can often be reached at char-gen, lateral limits are not insignificant. If a mage with sensitive system is cheesy, then so is a bunker rigger with infirm, or an assault-cannon toting minotaur with uncouth, or any character with incompetence.

Of course, people will tend to get these kind of flaws when they aren't that interested in that particular area anyways. Any flaw a player takes for a character will generally either fall under 1) Doesn't mess up my character, or come up too often; or 2) Fun to roleplay, even if it gets my character into trouble. I don't have too much of a problem with 1) if it is something that at least comes up occasionally. Now, if someone tried to take severe allergy: dinosaur poop, or a mundane character tried to take incompetence: spellcasting, then I would disallow it. Things like weak immune system, allergy: silver, or nano-intolerance might not come up much, but at least the possibility is there and the effect is quantifiable.

Remember, the last stage of character creation is GM approval, so if you are more stringent on flaws, simply let the player know.

Also, flaws like sensitive system aren't nearly as toothless if the DM in question is willing to forcibly implant some cyber if it is realistic to do so.

There is no threshold 0 in the game. People are confusing net hits with the threshold. You always need at least one success. One success is zero net hits. The SR4 writers occasional get this wrong too. This produced the crazy example in SR4 magic (p174) where they redefined a "success test" as requiring one net hit on page 173, then used a threshold per the regular game mechanics in the example. In SR4a page 183 they seem to have fixed this, as they now only require a net hit for an opposed test.


"The standard threshold is 1 (so only 1 hit is
necessary to succeed), though other tests may have thresholds as high
as 4 or more. The Success Test Difficulties Table lists a range of difficulty
levels along with a standard threshold for each. In some cases,
a threshold modifier may apply to an action, raising or lowering the
threshold by the stated amount.

"The more net hits a character scores (the more hits exceed the
threshold), the more the task was pulled off with finesse and flair. So
a character who rolls 4 hits on a threshold 2 test has scored 2 net hits."

Wow, that *really* changes things. In our first SR4 game, somebody got 2 successes on an attack roll and added 2 to his DV; we couldn't find a rule in the SR4 book that said it didn't work that way, so that's been how we've been handling it. Being able to quote chapter and verse will really help me reign that in. Thanks, Kzt!

How you've been handling combat is correct. Combat is an opposed test. On page 57 of the SR4 book, it plainly states:


I don't have SR4A, but I doubt it changes anything, since the quote kzt gives is exactly what my basic SR4 book says on page 56.

If the defender didn't score any hits that's indeed correct. In an opposed test like combat the net hits however are equal to the attacker's hits minus the defender's hits. The relevant passages are on p. 149 of SR4A or p. 139 f. of SR4.

Oh, I see...because in this case the Threshold is the Defender's Dodge roll - or at least, that's one way to look at it.

Let me make sure I've got this:

I'm shooting a DV6 weapon at a Merc.
I get three hits; he gets three hits; I miss.
I get four hits; he gets three hits; I hit for DV7

Is that right?

Yes.

what a dick move. "I'm going to make you lose 30-50 karma in one GM fiat move, resulting in you losing 6-10 sessions of progress. BL"

I'd seriously get annoyed if someone pulled that on me! Invalidating 2-6 months of gameplay in one fell swoop is just not nice.

Yup, that was the text from success tests. Opposed tests are different, as the combat opposed tests (note that there is a special "combat opposed test" vs regular "opposed test"- I have no idea why) redefine net hits as successes [A-B=successes] (which I think is unfortunate - the game would be cleaner if they used the same definition as success tests - but they don't).

However some of the optional rules do actually use thresholds for combat, though by turning combat into success tests. Plus, on step 3 of the combat sequence, they say that you can succeed on a tie in certain cases - like touch only attacks, plus on page 159 they give you a +2 die pool for touch only attacks... I hate special rules like "but you succeed on a tie".

There is nothing wrong with any GM choosing to use thresholds for opposed tests, as long as the GM understands this is a variant rule, has told everyone how stuff will work up front, and uses them appropriately. Every point of a threshold has the same effect (in theory) as reducing the attackers pool by 3 dice, but in practice I'd expect it to be harsher. (This is kind of what they do with mana barriers in SR4a, though only for success tests)

I've toyed with having wards impose their force as a threshold on spells that target or affect targets inside a, as I think the protection they provide in the rules is too wimpy. But that is definitely not RAW.

Luckily for you, Cranial Bombs cost no essence!

That's fine, doesn't trigger sensative system either. Win/win.

Since the Prejudice NQ in RC, there is.

And the person never wanting to shoot a gun gets 15 BP for being incompetent in every of the 3 skills - more if he goes on with the rest of the shooting stuff. And he doesn't even have to pay for shooting skills.

The issue you claim to be there - isn't. Because there is a big difference between not wanting to, and not being able to. Especially when your life is on the line.

It's totally bizarre. Allergy: Gold is straight up there in the book on the sample characters. They WANT you to get free BPs from meaningless disadvantages. Don't worry about it.

If you want to go all out, take Incompetence(Heavy Weapons) and Incompetence(Gunnery) as well, and while your at it pick up Incompetence(Aerospace Mechanic).

QFT. Sensitive System is a bit different however, as it does not prevents you from taking cyberware, but makes it much more detrimental to your essence. But that is a disadvantage nonetheless.

First off, OP:

1) Technomancers aren't uncommon. They are statistically insignificant. They may be uncommon in the shadows if you want to play it that way, but, to me, uncommon is greater than 1:100. Less than 1:100 is rare. I'd make him pick another group or make him assume 1 in every 100 people is a "sekrit technodevil".

2) In debt. I don't want to tell you how to play your game, but you're on a forum looking for advice, so.. I think of "In Debt" to be more than the sum of some money and some points. To me, In Debt is historical - Not like, T -20min runner K borrowed some money. A guy doesn't just decide to go to a loan shark. That guy has to have a relationship with this loan shark. The size of the debt reflects the size of that negative relationship. -5bp means that this guy, K, owes a guy money, has owed him money, and likely will owe him money again as soon as he falls on hard times. Meanwhile, this Shark is thinking of ways to exploit his relationship to K to make it pay out in his favor. Maybe he sells some info on K. Maybe he asks K to do something which K can't rightly refuse. The point is, the debt means that his guy is under someone else's thumb. He can pay off the money, but he can't get rid of the negativity without paying off the karmic debt.

3) Lifestyle - Who cares? Is this the Sims now? Get to the action!

Now, others.

4) Sensitive system. First point, Cyber is awesome. Nanoware is awesome. Of course, you can still pack a lot of bang in even half a regular point of essence, but you're only considering the obvious here. You're still thinking on the build and not on the runs. It's like this, cyber sams are made of parts. Replaceable parts. If he catches a grenade and loses a limb, or the use of his eyes, he buys another set. The first time some street punk takes an aimed shot at your sensitive mage's face and connects, so much for seeing again. Unless he wants some shiny new eyes - the ones with protective covers and built-in magnification.

5) Scorched + Sensitive Neural Structure = SPAM ME. Scorched means that someone already has his number. SNS means that his number is up. This is a terrible combination. Walking around with a comlink on active is going to be a real problem for this guy.

6) O SNAP. Incompetence. "Treat as unaware for this active skill." I like to take that literally. I wouldn't allow a player to take an incompetence quality unless he can explain to me just how his character has come to be convinced that "them ratchets and wotnot what is used by mekaniks to make a whirlybird go is far beyond my ken." I mean how the hell are you going to roleplay a character to whom the idea of pointing a gun at something and making bullets come out is a COMPLETELY ALIEN CONCEPT. If you show it to wolf-boy of the amazon enough times, even he's going to figure it out eventually. Though, maybe he just spent the 10 karma to do so

Cthulhudreams, and what in in nine hells made you think that the Sixth World was a nice place where NPCs would decide not to screw someone over merely because the piece of cyber they would normally implant into anyone else happens to hurt more. As a player it is YOUR job to keep your character safe and not expect the DM to hold your hand and babysit you. Sometimes bad shit happens and you need to roll with the punches.


Yes, forcibly implanting cyber of any kind is probably really fragging rare, but there are times when it simply makes sense for an NPC to do so to a captured character, and I'm not only referring to bombs.

First of all permanent damage, such as loss of sight, is an optional rule, which should be discussed with the players beforehand. Secondly nothing forbids the mage who has just lost his eyes to perceive astrally until he gets to a clinic to have his eyes cloned. He is not obliged to buy cybereyes and IIRC cloned eyes are not much more expensive than the better cybereyes. while this has its own dangers, it is a viable and logical option for someone with Sensitive System.

I'm not sure what you mean. Scorched only applies to Black IC and BTLs, and Sensitive Neural Sructure only to simsense based damage. The normal matrix user would never encounter those dangers.

@Ravor: While it is true that the GM should not go soft on PCs, he should tell the players beforehand that there is a possibility that he will permanentely gimp the characters. Implanting 'ware into an awakened character is just that. There is no way to get the Magic point back. Essence can be regenerated, Magic can't. If the players are fine with that, go ahead.

I might possibly be slightly inclined to agree with you Dakka Dakka IF losing some magic through implanting cyber actually permentally "gimped" a character. Since doing so is merely painful in the short term but opens up other pathways of advancement in the long term I have no qualms at all about it.

Besides, as I've mentioned before, the Sixth World is not a nice place populated by nice people and if the players are counting on their DM to hold their hands and go easy on them when logic dictates otherwise then everyone involved might as well simply engage in a circlejerk or go play video games with liberal save functions.

Well let's see, you have one mage with Sensitive System, one without and a mundane character. Each is implanted with 0,6 points of cyberware. The sensitive mage loses 2 points of magic, a significant setback which cannot be removed. The normal mage loses 1 point of magic, still a disadvantage but only half as bad. The mages could at a later point replace the ware with something more beneficial to them, but they would have to spend a lot of Karma (especially with the rule changes of SR4A) to get their magical power back to before the implantation.
The mundane on the other hand suffers almost no drawbacks unless the implantation kills him outright. Should he wish to later get his lost essence back he can do that. Its expensive but possible.
So now the mages are behind the mundanes powerwise. Why would the mundanes still work with them if they become a liability? As You said shadowrunners are not a bunch of nice people gallivanting through a nice world filled with other nice people. And why would the mages still work with the mundanes on jobs that become more and more difficult when they cannot keep up?

Singling out the mages or even the one with the negative quality sounds unfair towards the player and not logical in game.
BTW about what kinds of wares are we tralking anyway? I have yet to find an IG reason to implant stuff like that.

As I wrote above, if everybody is fine with either style, go ahead.

As a character looking at the numbers, I might think that, but not as a GM dealing with a character who takes those two qualities in combination. You are forgetting that Qualities are History and whatever history the player provides isn't going to be as complete as the history I give him. You're saying, "I'm not playing a junkie or a hacker, why would I ever run into Black IC or BTLs?" when the question isn't "why would I," but "why did I."

What I mean is that Scorched implies that the person in question was digitally compromised, and Sensitive Neural Structure means that they had their legs over their head with their hands tied to the headboard when it happened. Especially so in the case of a complete amateur computer user. So, as a GM, I wouldn't assume that their happy ass bumbled into some Dangerous IC and got fried in their daily business. When would that ever happen? Black IC is only legitimately found in the most secure corporate systems. The only thing that makes sense to me is that this character is a victim or an ex-user. Now, what would be the purpose of victimizing some random person so much that it shorted their brain out? Player didn't bother to come up with a satisfactory explanation? How about brainwashing? Turns out that the player and the character both don't know that I've just translated their 10bp from Scorched and SNS into 10bp from Judas by making them a sleeper agent or getting 5bp from a compulsion they don't understand and 5bp from flashbacks every time they see a NERPS advert. Also, that's in addition to being vulnerable to further brainwashing. Or, if they say they're an ex-BTLhead who got hooked hard and fast then got dried out by someone. Looks like that's 5bp for Big Regret, and, who's this on your doorstep? 5bp for Enemy or Dependent. Point is, there's going to be unresolved circumstances for a character with those two qualities bunched up like that. Someone has got their number, and it's only a matter of time before problems arise. As a GM, it's my duty to make sure they do.


edt: Ah yeah, I always thought cloned parts were basically like bioware since you'd have to fiddle with major nerve clusters. Especially eyeballs. Still, cloning means natural as science can be, so no essence loss. Fair duce. As for the idea of revitalization restoring essence, but not magic, man, give the guy a Geas. It's good for players and for plots.

Wow Saint. So you take your player's existing flaws, extrapolate and *add* flaws without giving them the bonuses from them or even telling them? Those 2 flaws suddenly spawn into 10pt Judas negative quality, 5bp compulsion, 5bp flashbacks? Really? Because those are *not* the qualities they chose. I can honestly say if my GM did that, I'd hand him the sheet, tell him to enjoy his NPC and make a new character. If you approve my character as is, then despite you being a GM, you have no right to change my stats or qualities without first talking to me about it. If it happens during the course of play, fine, I can accept certain things. But to approve qualities and secretly say they're something else and hit me with that later is complete bull.

Point being, if I wanted to play a sleeper agent or have compulsions or somesuch, I'd damn well take the flaws. If I don't, I won't put those flaws on my sheet, and I certainly don't expect you to arbitrarily assign them to me because you don't care for the qualities I put down that you friggin' approved at character creation.

Chargen is the time when the GM is supposed to say "Uh, no, I don't think so." or bring up reservations or problems. Doing it in the game, for no reason than your own whim, without telling the player is just wrong, in my opinion.

This thread has been pretty educational for me about the general opinion of 'harmless' negative qualities. It seems like a lot of people on this board are prepared to fight pretty hard for Negative Qualities that the GM thinks don't fit the character, since they're RAW and they're in the character's best interest.

Jhai brings up some interesting points here: The time for making sure a character concept fits your GM's world is during the GM Approval phase. This is when these issues should be discussed, and characters that the GM doesn't want to deal with get shot down, figuratively speaking.

However, especially after the heated discussion in this thread, it seems clear to me that lots of players will insist on taking flaws regardless of how exploitive the GM claims they are. There are a lot of right honorable rules lawyers in this thread, and a lot of very passionate and intelligent players who will fight for their right to take the Negative Quality. Not every GM is prepared to deal with a constant onslaught of complaints about the build getting nerfed(NERPSed?) and I'm sure lots of GMs would just give in.

If a player in my game took a flaw that I had advised him against, specifically because he thought it would never come up, the simple fact is it would come up. I'm sure Superman thought that Allergy:Kryptonite was a safe bet, but somehow the stuff is all over the place. Why? Drama. The writers want to challenge him, so they put him in a position where his weaknesses come into play. I reserve the right to do the same - not to punish the player or to be a dick, but to make the game interesting. Indiana Jones' phobia about snakes has never kept him from being a hero...but you know what? That's exactly why it had to be snakes.

"Any disadvantage that isn't a disadvantage isn't worth any points."

I agree, if someone takes something that he's sure will never come up and insists on getting points it's the GMs obligation to make it come up from time to time. Typically at terribly inconvenient moments.

^ this.

-milk.

My general theory when it comes to negative qulities, are that they should be restrictive, but not moreso than RAI (NOT RAW.)

For example: A player decides to try and be 'cheesy' and take, scorched: Non-hacker for a street Sam. Okay, fine, but one run requires him to go ride-along with the team's hacker into the matrix. Suddenly a flaw that he thought would never come up, comes up!

Or a Mage Player takes "Incompetent: Gunnery." Fine, stick him in a few (note, only a few) situations where that comes up.

The problem I had with my OP was that I couldn't find a way to make Day Job and Prejudice(5 point, threshold 0) come up in a game without making them worse than any other 5 point NQ

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
(Henry Jones, Sr is riding in the rear of a biplane being shot at by the Germans. He grabs the machine gun and sends a burst at the enemy, missing the German and shredding the plane's tail)
"Junior...they got us."

GM reserves the right to call into question any silly or inexplicable Negative Qualities, and punish accordingly. Incompetence (Artisan), for example, will result in your GM forcing your character to literally sing as if his life depended on it. Because it does.

What's the point? He'll fail, as he isn't even allowed to default.

But keep in mind there are... people... areound for whom the complete inability to perfom anything artistic is quite a stigmata... one that means they won't have any business with the character whatsoever.

And how would anyone find out outside an arts contest?

...then his team is going to have to save his silly ass.

If you take a Negative Quality, even one you think the GM can't use against you, the GM can use it against you. If you want to insist taking it is RAW, then remember that the GM using it in the adventure is equally RAW.

Play *with* your GM, not against him. He's got more imaginary guns then you do.

He can't even tell a story or draw a straigth line.

People find out pretty fast - each and every incompetency gets you Notoriety.

Why?

The GM can use the fact that your character exists against you.

What's the point making everything a life & death situation?

It's usually just plain GM fiat.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

So would that character get negative dice pool modifier to forgery, con, the mechanics group and other skill that require some kind of creativity? as a side not I don't like how incompetence works mechanically. I would prefer if the book used a system similar to that of Infirm but that is a different problem.

But Notoriety only has an effect if a) you use this system which in my impression not too many groups do and b) the NPC must know about the character's reputation, which is exactly what I doubt to be obvious unless the PC actually tells everyone that he couldn't dance even if his life depended on it.