@sabs
Just from the raw point value it is not that good.
Like mentioned before you have to buy off uneducated at one point.
So you are up to 50BP for +11 and -6 to the attributes. (You get some powers, but you have to get Deltaware if you want some)

As a matter of facts pixies play only well in one, very destinctive role.
And this is the one of the mage. Everyting else, they kind of suck at. (May be some special adept builds or infiltration, too)

Monofilament whip pornomancer mystic adept pixie. distinctive? maybe. inexplicably unbalanced? definitely.

*Headdesk* The Unbalanced Pixie (In every form of the word!) in my group was just happy throwing dumpsters at people.

Oh, and fireballs to the crotch.

I don't mind paying the cost for Vomeronasal Organ. I just am annoyed with the drawbacks to the quality. Yes you get a bonus to perception tests and social tests, but when in an area with a large amount of people (a very common occurrence) or near garbage (also a very large occurrence) you lose two dice off of EVERY test. I mean I could have understood this if it was a 5 pt merit, but it is 10 pts. I mean why get this when I could get Biocompatability for the same cost?

Face (Adept version).

Flavour? That is why I got it.
Honestly, the penalty is enforced via GM Fiat. As are most things that adversely affect a character. So no big deal, really.

Or you could buy a rating: 3 enhanced pheromone receptor for 15,000 (3 build points) and 0.10 Essence. But as a "natural" quality, I can see it costing 10 points - you get two significant advantages, while a cheap and relatively common piece of gear can negate the potential disadvantages.

When you get things that "fit" a character, you will sometimes get things that are less than the completely optimal choice. Even an inveterate min-maxer such as myself will sometimes do something like make a combat-oriented adept without bioware.

Heaven Forbid... You mean you actually make a character to concept on ocassion? I am sorely disappointed Glyph...

Why do you have to have synergy. I know the prevailing theory for supermegagigantor character creators is to stack every unreasonable Surge/metagenic/adept ability into them to get the absolute maximum dice pool scores imaginable, but I tend to think if your having fun then there's no such thing as a terrible character.

If you're being outshone at every turn by everyone else, you're probably not having fun.

It's all a matter of degrees. Synergy isn't a requirement, per se, but a marked lack of it can make it hard if not impossible to create a character that can actually do what you intended it to do in play as opposed to in theory. This can be irritating even for people who really do love the ROLE part of roleplaying, since creating a PC is ideally sort of like getting to write your own part for a play. Players who write a competent veteran background and end up with a feckless bumbler in practice are often understandably disappointed with the end result.

Well... 400 BP is not enough to create a Competant Veteran in many Niches. Maybe they should shoot a little lower perhaps.

if you're specialty is a field the rest of the teams couldn't afford, because they squeezed all BP in being awesome at their field, you can't be outshone. I thought, that was the reason for being a team in the first place?

Hey quick question for everyone here. As you know I wrote up a character with Vomeronasal Organ, and I'm having a problem with dealing with the downsides. Well, I went looking through the books to see if there was an implantable respirator, but did not find one. I did, on the other hand, find on page 341 of SR4A:



Based on the examples given, is it possible to implant nose filters? The cyberfilters would have settings to allow more unfiltered air in when the user wants it to and closes more when the stink gets too bad. The character would control it with the his PAN... or in my character's case, slave it to the Olfactory Booster.

Can't remember, Is your Olfactory Booster in your Nose, or in a Cyberlimb?

I Do not know anything about implantable Nose Filters, I just use the regular ones. Stink gets too bad, just put them in. No essence cost, and fairly cheap...

The Booster is in the nose.

Also the reason for implanting the filter is for ease of use and like having cyber eyes rather than glasses is that it's always on you and can be engaged with a thought.

Not necessarily. For one thing, some runner teams have an area of expertise they like to concentrate on, like smuggling or wetwork or whatever. I've ran games for a drone rigger, combat mage, gunslinger adept and street samurai team whose solution to most problems could often be summed up as moar dakka. For another, some teams boil down to shotgun weddings since IRL it's really just a bunch of people around a table who want to get a game rolling. Not everyone wants to sublimate their character concept for the sake of making a swiss army knife type team every time a new campaign is started up, after all-- it's the classic "I always get stuck playing the cleric hacker" problem. So there's many different factors at play when coming up with sheets that will be effective in a given table environment, and there's usually even several different ways to fix a poor fit. But with that said, sometimes the simplest solution is to have the player choose a concept that doesn't have them fighting the BP system tooth and nail from the word go just to avoid being a liability.

Well, if your booster is in your nose, and your veromonasal is still working, you cut out your booster and that should block ALL sensory input from your nose (including the veromonasal)

A character with skills that 1) get used and 2) no-one else is comparably good at should never have to worry about not getting any spotlight. It's as simple as that: be the best in the party at something that will matter in the game.

And as for being "weak"; base skills/attributes of 4 each is supposed to be fairly good. The game system lets you turn it up to eleven though if you try, and then anyone who's just reasonably good will seem weak. It's a bit of an inflation thing; you can become spoiled and think any dicepool below 16 is a mite weak.

Defaulting can really highlight the inflation thing as well. For example, it really doesn't take much for an elf gunslinger with Muscle Toners to pick up infiltration as a sideline.

That's true of course.

I did try to build an unAugmented, unAwakened, nonResonant driver/face, but it was pretty tough. It worked - kinda. Not if you want to play high-powered pro. The best to be said for it was that it'd be awesome once you gave in and put in some bioware.

Base skill + Attribute of 4 is pretty good. It's about what you would see for most squad leader/veteran mooks, the kind who are a step up from a bog-standard security grunt or beat cop. Still, keep in mind that even at that level, you start running into augmentations. And tech such as smartlinks and medkits are fairly ubiquitous.

But depending on the campaign, runners often need to be a lot better than "pretty good". They need to blow "pretty good" out of the water, and go toe to toe with "really damn good". The mundane with skills and Attributes around 4 is still better than average - but he's out of his pond, and swimming with the sharks.

Also true. 6 dice is fine for many technical skills if you work at a well-lit bench with adequate tools and are not expected to perform miracles. On a run, however, sometimes you just need to be able to crack that maglock before the hellhounds catch your scent.

Which is a fine way to describe, in a nutshell, the difference between a "competent" corporate drone and a "competent" Shadowrunner.

Yeah, the fire breathing dogs aren't going to ease up just because some dude tasered you earlier. It's a tough gig.

Can't you do the same thing with trodes and a skin link (at least for the glasses)?

That's what my face did. Screw wireless, at least skinlink makes the enemy hacker work a bit harder to get into your shit Throw on some shock-frills and watch the little insect-scale drones fry...

Reading this Ive found myself asking 'Why is there a sort of bias against using augmentations?'

Im aware that in some cases its thought experiments, 'Can I make a totally baseline guy who can compete with the Cyber-Samurai'. But honestly, the game system seems built around the assumption that anyone in the dangerous line of work that is shadowrunning is going to take whatever edge they can get. Hell, if it was RL Id sure as hell be taking every advantage I could get(born with Magic\Resonance, buy cyber\bio, every nifty gadget they have). It seems odd to expect someone in a world like SR to be able to compete against everyone if they arent going the same distance. Kinda like a couch potato bitching that he cant out-run an Olympic sprinter.

As for group cohesion..well, its kind of a two-way street. If Team X has no magical support, then Id think the GM would avoid giving them runs that absolutely require it in some fashion. Now if magic just makes it EASIER, then its time for the mundanes to show how much they can kick ass compared to a bunch of fireball-slingers. Or do what I did, talk to the others, find out what they're doing, and try something new. Or if you're getting shoe-horned, talk it out. Negotiate Id say even. Ask the guy always playing a Street-Sam to try being a hacker, break out of a rut.

Well, I don't have a general bias against augmentation but sometimes you want to use a non-invasive means of accomplishing your goal because you can't spare the essence (either due to heavy cybernetics in other areas or being a mage/technomancer).

Its more of an overall feeling Ive gotten from hanging around here for a bit now, a sort of 'Do it with gear or skills' rather than 'Blow some essence or be a magic user of some kind'

The character that I wrote up is a Chaos Mage has 1.98 pts of Cyber/Bioware, so I do NOT follow the "Do it with gear rather than 'ware" rule.

The reason I was asking about the filter is that the Vomeronasal Organ (Runner's Companion: ) has a pretty big downside. I was wanting to implant nose filters that my character could engage with a thought. The reason I was thinking about this is that some people think that having a Vomeronasal Organ means that you can't get a Olfactory Booster.



EDIT: I just reread what I wrote and I wanted to clean up what I said.

Unfortunately, the rules are vague on how much of the olfactory booster actually replaces, rather than enhances, the natural sense of smell, so it falls under the purview of individual GMs.