.." all the advanced character options in this book automatically suffer the effects of the Distinctive Style and do not
got a BP bonus" (Runner's Companion pg. 103)
have they really thought it through when then print this..
for example: Human who is first-rate athletic (marathon runner)
w/ level 1 Surge Changeling (10 bp positive, 5 bp negative metagenetics qualities)
5 BP Celerity (positive)
5 BP Ogre Stomach (positive)
5 BP Impaired Attribute (Strenght) (negative)
.. and Distinctive Style automatic negative quality for them is waaay over reacting..
..so, any comments from Forum occupants??

Well that might well be a one point distinctive style. Someone that moves at superhuman speed and have slimmer build than normal (including shoulder width, thin wrists, etc.) will draw slightly more attention. Sure it's not like he got a trunk and cat ears and a tail but impaired attribute is a bit of a cheat-drawback since there is no stat that is as weak as strength for a vast majority of all characters.

If you want melee damage, go for bone density (biotech) or critical strike (Adept). You get MASSIVLY more bang for your bp/karma/nuyen that way

Well, Celerity will mean that the guy has disproportionately thick legs. Thick, like as big around as his emaciated torso, thick. It's not like that's invisible. "You mean freak legs? Yeah, he comes in here from time to time."

Level I Surge gives you a net gain of 5BP. That 5BP is lost again by the Distinctive Style I quality. Seems pretty simple, though it does imply that any rare chrome should have the same effect.

Also, strength is required for Running... but yeah, max strength is pretty worthless.

In addition [...] the following qualities available in SR4 qualify as metagenetic qualities...

I chose Biocompatibility and Weak Immune System and got Distinctive Style.

What I want to know is what is explicitly refered to as an "advanced character option" in Runner's Companion.

Notice it says that you suffer the effects of it, not that you actually get it. I think this is basically pointing out that metavarients are rare and will thus be more notable than their regular verity. An infected is usually going to stand out, as is a dracoform or a shifter.

I think it is basically just a statement that gives the GM the ability to point at it and say "That is why your Night One in Seattle is so easy to track down all the time."

Oh, and SURGE doesn't give you any net BP. It costs you X BP and you get 2X worth of advantages and X worth of disadvantages which is net 0 BP gain.

I mean technically the karmagen system is an advanced character option, but getting distinctive style for that seems... odd.

And yeah, as others said, your legs will be particularly strong and muscular and will thus get you picked out a little bit (Thus a low level of distinctive style).

Actually I have not found anything in that book actually explicitly states that it is an "advanced character option". It might have been intended to give the GM some way to do as you have stated, then it is poorly written if so.

Runner's Companion (pg 103,almost last sentence in the page) there it is..

The Runners Compendium by itself
Every Metavariant,sapient Critter,Surgeling,Shapeshifter,unusual Char (like Free Spirit,AI,etc)
every HMHVV Variant .Everything thats in the Runners Compendium !
By RAW it doesn't even need to be visual (you can have a Surgeling that looks 100 % natural,no visible traces) he still suffers from Distinctinctive style

with an distinctively undistinctive Dance
Medicinman

You're getting Distinctive Style anyway, may as well take a cosmetic special effect or two as your drawback so it at least makes sense. At least, that's my take, anyway.

Or if you're playing with a GM and not a computer then you can easily convince your GM that since nothing about your Changling stands out physically, then there shouldn't be any reason to have people recognize her more easily. For instance, if you have higher logic and lower strength, then gee, you just look like any of a million other tech-heads out there in the world, so no reason to get recognized for it. But if you have fur, ears, and a tail, then you might be easier to spot in a crowd unless you wear concealing clothing in which case you'll just look like any other shadowrunner out there.

The rule after all applies to karmagen and priority gen, as well as all of the qualities in the book (even the non-metagenic ones), so like I said earlier, it is in place to allow the GM to put exact rules (Via RAW) into play to have the furry or ghoul or whatever stand out.

On the other hand, Changlings can effectively take more than the normal limit of 35 points of pos / neg qualities. So if you had higher Logic and lower strength as normal qualities, you couldn't take as many other qualities as you could if you got those attributes by being a changeling. Hence the distinctive style might make sense from a balance perspective... and also from a role-play perspective. In real life, there's folks who are abnormally smart / weak, but have "normal" genetics, and then there's folks who are obviously savants and have some sort of heriditary connective tissue problem. Both might have the same stats, but the second guy is gonna be a lot more memorable.

True, it does let you break the 35 limit technically. Even so, I don't know that two people with Log 5 and Str 2 are going to look any different just because one has SURGEd and one hasn't, though I guess there is some argument for it.

You can easily convince some GMs, maybe. In my experience, most GMs are very unwilling to drop a negative consequence given in the rules. Most GMs also don't want to see a lot of SURGE in their games. These two points add up to make in nigh-impossible to get this dropped, hence my advice to just get something that makes you look funny and does nothing else, sine you're getting the negative consequence of it anyway rather than something that hurts you numerically but doesn't show.

My book calls karmagen and priority gen alternative options, not advanced options. By RAW, there are no advanced character options presented in the book at all. Most GMs will call it Changelings, Metavariants, Spirits, AI, Infected, and Nonhuman Metasapients, I would wager. The rule was put there to punish people for playing weird and unusual characters... (I would wager they would phrase it as "discourage from" not "punish for," but I call that a cop-out.)

The Runner's Companion doesn't explicitly state that either actually.

It states that all "advance character options" get DS. It does not explicitly state what constitutes "advance character options" or even state that everything in the book is an "advance character option".

Medicineman: If we go by everything in the book is an advance character option, then anyone with Anti-MAD systems/Common Sense/Atlantean Foundation (as a Group Contact)/a Company Man (as a Contact) would have Distinctive Style. The way I see it, there could be 2 ways to interpret that line:
1) there is no explicitly stated "advanced character options", hence there are none, or
2) everything in the book is an "advanced character option", hence everything in the book is one.
While I think option 1 is simpler and closer to what is as written, I do not deny that you have grounds to go with 2.

I'm fairly sure I remember reading somewhere in RC where it says that everything in RC is an advanced character option... or maybe someone on these forums said that and I'm remember that.

That seems to be the go-to for a lot of people, but I haven't seen it in the book, errata, or FAQ.

I believe that it was a simple editing mistake, p. 103 should read "alternative character concepts" instead of "advanced character options." This is based on the Table of Contents titling the chapter as "Advanced Character Concepts" but the chapter header saying "Alternative Character Concepts."

That would apply that Changelings, Sapient Critters, Infected, Drakes, Metavariants, Shapeshifters, etc. all have the Distinctive Style.

Hmm, searching through the book though, I did notice that 'Advanced character options' appears in the credits section. Given from what it doesn't include, it seems that it is only intended to apply to the races.

Karoline--It looks like we posted at the same time. The section you are referencing is a Chapter header in the Table of Contents, and applies to the entire chapter, not just the first section of it.

That would make sense, but without seeing it in print, it's hard to get it passed by any GM I play with... not that it matters much in the immediate term, since my most recent character is an Infected Changeling, and couldn't blend into a crowd if her life depended on it without Illusion Magic. I'm lucky I only got one level of Distinctive Style for it. Good thing that RAW doesn't give the option of stacking levels for taking multiple options, right? I had a hard enough time defending the character from other players, who tried to gimp me and force me to take Freak, even though none of my mods say that I should.

The section Karoline refers to is actually Advanced Character Options (Credits) as opposed to Advanced Character Concepts (Table of Contents).

I find that sentence to be both overly broad and ambiguously worded. I would be more inclined to go with the next page's sidebar, where it talks more specifically about what could constitute a distinctive style:


That sounds a lot more reasonable than hitting someone with distinctive style because they customize their lifestyle or have a dockworker as a contact.

I'd call it a good rule of thumb, and very likely what I'd use as a GM

As I was saying/typing
every Charackter Creation Option.
I don't like It because its such a general assumption and I'd change It but thats RAW

Hough!
Medicineman

Medicineman--I see what you are saying and agree that there needs to be some kind of scale to it. I was pointing it out mainly for the people who were asserting that the entire book is covered, so if you bought an anti-MAD sensor or had a group contact, the RAW would smack you over the head with a distinctive style.

My table likes to play with a lot of fringe concepts at times, and so they learn to either stay in the fringe or hide what they are.

If People are really that...Narrowminded,maybe they deserve a smack on the Head ?

with a smacking Dance
Medicineman