Hey guys,

As I keep preparing our SR4A campain, i remembered that there was a group-karma-pool in previous editions which every pcs who had contributed to it could use. Are there rules for something like this in SR4? I did find the rules for group-edge for NPCs, which are somewhat near what I want to use.
I like the idea of the group bonding being expressed in a way that they can all contribute to everyones survival.
Obviously this is not for every group, if they keep fighting, don't trust each other, the wouldn't want to sacrifice their hard-earned karma for the rest of the group.

In case there are no rules for this, I wrote up these ideas (rather an outline than a complete set of rules)

- At his/her discretion, the GM of a group can start a group-edge atrribute. This attribute starts at 1. The GM should only do this, if the group behaves as such (displays trust and/or good teamwork for example).

- Every character that is part of this group can use this Edge as they can use their own (but not both their edge and group-edge for the same test).

- Group-edge refreshes at the same time, individual edge refreshes

- Group-edge can be increased by all the players that benefit from it by donating karma to it. Every increase of group-edge costs (New Level)*X Karma. The increase is done as soon as the players contributed enough karma to pay for it. The maximum for the group-edge attribute is (number of players in group)*Y

- If a player uses group-edge to gain more dice for a test, the number of dice gained may not exeed their own edge attribute (to prevent players being able to use an additional 20 dice, if group-edge was that high)

As you can see I so far could not decide on either maximum group-edge or the costs of increasing it. This is the part where you guys come in and hopefully toss some ideas around.
For costs I thought about X=(number of players in group)+5, or maybe only X=5, as normal for attributes. For the maximum I thought maybe Y=2 or maximum=6, whichever is bigger (to give groups of two players something to work with).

Thanks for your ideas!

edited for sr4 post icon

Group edge is for NPC only, who have no edge on their own.
The idea behind it is easy.
If you got a group of 6 human grangers they would have 4*6=24 Points of Edge to spend.
Thats a bit much.
Because the runners would have to use their edge for other scenes too.

You could refresh edge after each scene, but going this road would make it much to effectiv.

So instead you use one Edge pool of 4 or 5 for the whole group. So they are still able to spice up a reaction test (useless with an Edge attribute of 1), but are unable to use Edge on any roll.

I personally dislike another edge-source for players.
Why? Because Edge is a border line thing allready, as seen in the Mr.Lucky builds.
It is an attribute usable for ANYTHING.
So if you got two pools of stuff usable on anything, regeneration parallel, you might end up spending Edge on any major roll.

Fixed it. Prime Runners get their own Edge pools.

No official rule but in older Shadowrun you could throw your karma pool into the group pool so what I do is everyones 1st point of edge is in the group pool.

Heh, I'm reminded of Marvel Super Heroes waaaay back in the old FASERIP days, and the team karma pools. And when someone (*COUGH* Wolverine) would lose it all for everyone by killing a bad guy.