I going to open by saying that I brought this up a while ago in another thread about pets and after a couple days worked out an agreement with my GM regarding the procurement of One (1) Critter during Chargen that is completely dependent on the character's skillset.

Up until this point I have neglected to write these rules down and make them public. It's fairly simply and can only be used once per character during Chargen.

Similar rules will follow in the future in regards to hackers, riggers, etcetera. These have been play tested and deemed fair by my GM. I am releasing them to you fine folks for your benefit and inevitable critique.

Critter Procurement Based Upon Character Skill

It is of my opinion, and possibly to the benefit of you other fine Runners, that someone who spends at least 24BP at Chargen to gain a skill of at least 3 in Animal Training and Handling respectively should be given the opportunity to “purchase” one Critter at a discounted price and should be an animal that is built into said character’s back story.

Rules to follow.

• Discount applies only if the character has a skill level of at least three (3) in BOTH Animal Training and Animal Handling.
• Character starts by choosing the desired animal and must pay at the very least its base cost, this is non-negotiable.
• Then applying 50% (Round up) of the training multiplier to the cost of the animal
• If the character has the aforementioned skills at a rating of four (4) (or a 32BP investment) then the willpower multiplier should be halved as well.
• Specializations have no bearing on the discount.

Example:

Peter decides during Chargen that his former UCAS Army Interrogator, Brandon Burrs, has a Hellhound that was placed under his care in the service and that he has trained and maintained. The base cost for a Hellhound is 10,000¥.

In fitting Brandon’s character background the Hellhound has been trained for combat and therefore against instincts which under normal circumstances would be a cost multiplier of 10 (or a cost of 100,000¥) but since Brandon has a skill of 4 in Animal Training AND Handling the training modifier is halved making the cost multiplier 5 (or a cost of 50,000¥).

Since Brandon has a skill of MORE THAN 3 in the required skills he also has the opportunity to utilize the conditional modifier that allows him to halve the animals Willpower Multiplier, ranges set in Running Wild Pg. 35 “Training Multiplier Table”, which for a Hellhound (Willpower 3) is initially 2 and conditionally modified 1.

10,000¥ * 5 (Against Instincts Training) * 1 (Willpower Modifier) = 50,000¥ or 1/5 of Maximum BP allotment for gear.

i disagree. BP spent on resources can be resources acquired in any number of ways. they are not necessarily resources that you have bought, they can be resources that you have stolen, resources you built from scratch, resources you inherited from a dead family member, friend, or mentor, or any other resource.

all the BP spent reflects is what you currently have. nothing more. nothing less.

On the other hand Jaid the animal training costs seem excessive so I'm not opposed to some sort of cost reduction for starting characters however I think it might be better handled through a positive quality.

I will give the rules some more thought.

It is limited to ONE animal, ONE use, and the animal must be written in tho the Character background, and preferably essential to the character background.

alright, let's try this a different way.

a player decides to invest in the appropriate race, qualities, skills, and gear to have agility 8(10) and heavy weapons 6(9). this is clearly a greater investment of resources than mr animal trainer over there.

do you look at that and say "oh, you deserve a discount on a single heavy weapon of your choice"?

if not, then why are you considering a discount for animals?

the advantage to having the skill is that you can start off with an untrained or partially trained animal, which costs less, and then train it (further) as you go. and also that you can buy more animals at reduced cost once your first one is trained, and train those animals as well.

the advantage to spending build points on a skill is that you have access to that skill, and can make use of it. if you want resources, well... spend your build points on resources instead.

Another possible way to tackle this and make it more fair is to add a list of professions to the game that cost a certain amount of BP and each profession has a unique one use set of rules such as the above.

In this case it would be dog handler, you could also make rules for hackers, riggers, negotiators, linguists, businessman you name it. However that would be severe game modification and against the will of many of you Shadowrun purists out there (which in many cases I am one)

Still if you look at it from my perspective I think that spending exorbitant amounts of money at chargen for something that makes sense and fits your characters skillset is a little rediculous. No matter how much we would like to think it is Shadowrun is not perfect. I think i've developed a reasonable alternative and the GM agrees, so for our game it's fine. Whatever you guys want to do with it is up to you.

For example a hypothetical profession could be driver/traditional rigger. Cars are the game. If you look at the engine block modifications you can make and things of the sort to vehicles it can get very expensive very quickly. So if i were to hypothetically write a rule that can be used on one vehicle, one time only at Chargen specifically requiring a particular skillset (ie. Automotive Mechanic and Pilot Groundcraft) I believe it would be a benifit to the game.

Furthermore the GM has the ability to take these things away from you during gameplay. Anything can happen, just because you start the game with a nice car doesn't mean it'l last very long.

again, i don't see the need to further reward people for taking the skills they were going to take anyways. if you were going to make an animal handler, you were already going to take those skills, therefore those skills are worth the BP cost of buying those skills.

I certainly respect your opinion, and I'm only saying that these rules work in the current campaign with the current GM, I know you're not truly entitled to anything based on the skillset you choose. Like I said in many cases I am a SR purist.

I am not going to argue for the rules. I simply put them out as something that the community can either choose to use or ignore, I don't care. In my opinion it is something that needs to be handled on a case to case basis.

Thank you for your time.

The skill the OP is referring to is one that allows the user to "create" a trained animal.

The analogy of a heavy weapons user is apples to oranges. If said heavy weapons user had the skills and gear for modding his heavy weapon, I would merit a discount on said mods.

Depending on one's GM such skills and items allow users to "Create" items/things, such GM's can or not allow a "discount". In my games I have allowed such discounts but only with a very good and very lengthy back story.

There is a spreadsheet available here, that factors into the costs of training animals by the Running Wild Rules. IIRC normal animals ie cat will run 30k-50k each if purchased at CharGen. Some of the non normal animals run over 200k fully trained.

FYI there are some here that are like Judge Dread "The RAW is the RAW".

no, it is simply a basic comprehension of what BPs spent on resources are supposed to represent.

the street sam with 250k nuyen worth of cyberware crammed into his body didn't walk into the store one day with a huge pile of cash and just tell them to install everything they had. maybe a piece of that gear was gained while he was in a gang, some from his time in the military, another piece might have been swiped from a facility he was already running against, a third might have been partial (or full) payment for a run, and some pieces of 'ware could be stuff that he bought with cash. it *all* costs the same, and writing up an involved story about how he acquired it does not change that. neither does it change for the hacker who decides that he wrote all his own code, or the rigger who routinely steals drones, or the magician who has crafted his own focus or made his own binding materials.

you can of course change that for your game, but just because you write into your character background "the character did not actually pay any money for this" doesn't mean you get it for zero BP.

the advantage to having those skills is you can start off with untrained animals for cheap, and train them yourself in downtime, thus saving yourself a considerable amount of money.

Well, Blackb1rd, you can always take 'In debt' to cover the purchase, and 'day job (animal trainer)' to cover the increase to your lifestyle costs. Not what you're looking for, maybe, but it's an easy RAW way to approximate what you're going for.

EDIT: Wearz, as far as modding guns goes, by RAW, the Armorer skill allows people doing their own mods to pay half price.

it allows you to do so, not to have done so retroactively reducing the cost in BPs at chargen.

Granted.

I stand corrected, but my deeper meaning was towards not towards the modding, but building weapons from scratch. Ie download AR plans and roll out the minifac/shop/facility.

Yes building a weapon from AR plans with certain features/mods is allows desired mods not to be considered mods, but built in features not counting against the number of mods the weapon can take.

@Jaid do you have a "quoted" statement/errata/FAQ/link from the Devs/Lancers about not allowing that during CharGen? If No cool, If Yes if you can provide it. I do not want to get into a half full/half empty type of discussion on the matter.

There are methods of gaining discounted wares in CharGen buy using a selection of Qualities.

What can be done is create a Quality that reflects the current qualities that do allow discount on items/things at CharGen. Yes those would be "House Rules" and not RAW, but I am interested in seeing such "House Rules".

5 Point Quality 10% discount
10 Point Quality 20% discount

IIRC there is no RAW quality that allows greater than a 20% discount.

so you need a RAW quote for the fact that the rules for chargen apply in chargen while the rules for playing the game (ie not during chargen) apply when you're playing the game?

hmmm... well, can't help you there. there could be something in some obscure post on these forums or elsewhere, but i'm not interested in doing the research for you. i figure it's something they just considered common sense. if it isn't in the chargen portion of the book, then it doesn't apply to chargen.

One of my characters is a Samurai/Cybertechnology expert. Should she be allowed a discount on augmentations at build time? She has the following:

16BP = Medicine 4
18BP = Cybertechnology (bioware) 4
1BP = Medical Shop (5,000¥)
1BP = Cybertechnology Shop (5,000¥)
8BP = Street Doc (C4 L4), to perform the necessary surgery.
====
44BP

I can spend 250,000¥ (50BP) on equipment. I spent 10,000¥ on shops (above), 5,000¥ on lifestyle, and 15,000¥ on personal equipment. That leaves 220,000¥ to spend on bioware. I chose bioware because I have the Sensitive System quality.

14,000¥ = Muscle Augmentation 2
16,000¥ = Muscle Toner 2
160,000¥ = Synaptic Booster 2
30,000¥ = Synthacardium 3
======
220,000¥ = 44BP

With my skills I could halve the 44BP worth of augmentation to 22BP. I haven't saved any build points by taking skills to manufacture half-price augmentations. What I have saved is my cash limit. I can buy another 220,000¥ worth of augmentations!

60,000¥ = Damage Compensators 4
40,000¥ = Enhanced Articulation
90,000¥ = Orthoskin 3
25,000¥ = Platelet Factories
5,000¥ = Skin Pocket
======
220,000¥

For the record, this costs 3.70 essence. I'm getting to be a very beefy troll samurai now...

It's expensive, but I've acquired 470,000¥ of equipment, far exceeding the 250,000¥ starting cap.


I'm agreeing with Jaid that build points should just be taken as a starting position. If you choose to spend 10BP on a 50,000¥ credstick, which you then use to train the animal after the game starts, then that's perfectly allowable. I'd suggest this falls under a similar rule as starting availability:

@Hand-E-Food

From Augmentation:Page 127
Cyberware will need a Medical Facility or Cybertechnology Shop but this is a requirement for tailoring Beta and Deltaware. The rest is "Off the Rack" cyberwear.

Bioware will need a Medical Facility 200,000 Y

From a long ago topic here in Dumpshock IIRC Synner said was never the intention for non NPC's to build cyberware/bioware/nanoware.

One note the Restricted Gear Quality allows you get around the Availability Limitation but not the rating limit of 6.

This. The best way to give a discount for something like that is with a 5 point quality - heck, you could just use Black Market Contact(trained paracritters).
Pair it with another 5pt quality like Artisan, Trustworthy, or Catlike - a custom one, similiar in nature, for the animal training/care/ husbandry skillgroup.

Now that I have my books

Genecrafted 5 BP gives a 20% discount
Genetic Heritage 10 BP gives a 20% discount
Black Market Pipeline 10 BP gives a 10% discount

So a 5 BP with a 10% discount
a 10 BP with a 20% discount

Both are with the precedents set by Augmentation and Runner's Companion.

Fair enough. I got a big discussion about manufacturing cyberware and bioware and somehow got the impression this applied:
Regardless, you see my point. Allowing skills to provide discounts on starting gear can provide obscene benefits.

16BP = Animal Handling 4
16BP = Animal Training 4
8BP = 40,000¥ of lifestyle and personal equipment
7BP = 35,000¥ of critters
35BP = 175,000¥ of half-price critter training, equating to 350,000¥ of training
====
82BP = 425,000¥ of resources

Blackb1rd, I understand your rules allow only one critter to be bought in this manner. I might allow that for the sake of a fun game, but as a general rule, I'd discourage it. In your example, you're only saving 5BP. I'd suggest taking a negative quality to offset it.

I'd have to run the numbers for a few basic trained critters beforehand, but I'm tentatively of the opinion that you could safely give a pretty large discount on critters at creation without causing problems. I would permit a character to get a price break on pets at starting because the cost of getting a pet trained can easily become ridiculous if you want them to be useful in any sort of dangerous field (such as, I dunno, maybe shadowrunning) - to the point where you're paying five to ten times as much to buy what is essentially a more fragile drone that you have to pay to maintain[1].

Genecrafted is 5BP, -20% cost for genetech only at startup, right? I'd say a 5BP quality that gives you a larger price break (Maybe even as high as -40%) for trained critters bought at startup, with a limit on the number of critters that benefit from the cost break (which lets the OP reintegrate level-of-skill into the equation) would be fine - the trained critter costs can get astronomical and in many ways a trained critter is a harder asset to deploy than 'ware, a good gun, or drones. I wouldn't make analagous qualities for every category of gear, obviously.

This might be more pertinent in games that are less likely to use the Qualities or Disadvantages that provide bonus cash - without the latter, you're using a significant portion of a finite pool, and it's not like having a warform bear will make up for not being able to afford essential gear because of the BP-cash limit (especially because you still have to pay for the lifestyle that warform bear is accustomed to[2])

[1]: In fact, it might be better cost-analysis-wise to just buy ten animals that don't know how to fight and hope that they help you achieve your goals during their frenzied attempts to flee the combat area.

[2]: Y'know, High lifestyle. Bubble baths, soft lighting, high thread-count sheets. Typical things that bears require.

With Running Wild and Unwired.
Character using animals/para animals fitted with Trodenets, or NanoPaste trodes, a comm link, sim modules.

Mundane animals ie dogs/cats/rats will give 4+ channels of sensory data, vision, hearing, smell, taste, in some cases low light vision(cat).

Unless you take restricted gear several times, you would have to use Tacnet 2 software.
You could have the following with out breaking the bank on character generation.
Cat
Dog
Rat
Crow

The above would allow the scout to gain information from his/her/its scout animals.

Using Tacnet software and a commlink the rest of his team could "know" about the area and any targets in same.

So trained "fragile" animals can be of use to a Shadowrunning Team.

As I stated they were designed for a specific game and worked well in a specific game. Period.

It's been interesting reading all of your thoughts and opinions but I hold no grudge against anyone that doesn't like them or thinks they are worthless. Do with 'em as you please. You have my permission to print them out and burn them if that satisfies you.

I developed these rules for the sole purpose of gaining a critter that was central to my character's background without spending 40BP of resources right off the bat. The build actually had significantly less than 50BP allotted for gear as it was, it was closer to 30BP. So even 10BP for the critter was what I would consider a "substantial" hit on the gear allotment (at least 1/3 if not more)

I personally don't see any major problems with the way I handled it (although that's probably do to the fact that I handled it ) and I think it is practical and reasonable. I know others don't see it that way and that's perfectly fine.

I agree totally. I have no problem with how you handled it. As far as a house rule goes, it's as good as it could be. I simply think it conflicts with the concept of build points.