I came across this making a character last night. I GM my games so instead of just going with my interpretation of this I decided to ask the community. Do you think a rigger would suffer the effects of the Combat Paralysis Negative Quality if he was rigging from a safe distance away from the combat? Say he's 5 or 6 blocks away in a van, running a swarm in VR. I see Combat Paralysis being in the center of the combat, gunshots zipping past your head and you freeze for a sec. It may effect him if he is jacked-in, because he would be in the center of the action, but using command or captains chair i think he would be free of the effects.

Hmm. I can see this going either way, but as a GM I'd enforce it just to make sure the flaw actually means something. Maybe not enforce it quite as harshly in Captain's Chair, but attribute part of it to freezing up when under stress. Knowing that bullets are flying right there with your friends, and that stray shots may cost thousands of nuyen in damage if not destroy your drone babies outright, that seems like the sort of thing that would be quite stressful, at least for someone with that flaw.

I see Combat Paralysis as the character being a wuss who shies from combat in general. Besides, Unwired specifically mentions that CP applies while in VR.

Think of the Lt in Aliens, he totally freezes even though he's essentially in the command chair.

Yes it does affect you even in captain's chair at least by the book. That's why no one ever takes it.

I once had a player who took it. But he was a Speaker's way Adept... And he didn't die.

A rigger commanding several drones is most likely not doing so in VR, to be honest...

I'd let the player get away with this particular case; but you know how fights tend to be - there's just no predicting where the opposition might turn up. The flaws are meant to be meaningful, after all... :3

Not sure how a rigger jumps into a swarm.
That being said, I see no problem why fear of dumpshock by having your jumped in drone blown out of the sky couldn't cause Combat Paralysys to trigger.

For that matter, combat paralysis doesn't need to be fear of being hit or damaged himself. The character could have a fear of hurting others, hurting innocents, or simply a need to completely understand the entire situation in detail before opening up and shooting.

Semi-Real-Life example. In Generation Kill, "Captain America" had serious combat paralysis, to the degree that it prevented him from leading.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhGIFLWadEU <- Captain America, AFTER everyone realizes the enemy was long gone before they got there.

I might allow a runner to send commands to an autonomous remote drone, but anytime they wanna control a drone directly (AR or VR) is going to be enough exposure to violence to trigger the Quality.



-k

Well, that's because Combat Paralysis can be fairly manageable depending on your build. There's definitely better options from a pure min-max perspective but ultimately if your character has decent initiative to begin with you can often get away with it, particularly if your first move in the combat is to always try and get your butt behind cover anyway. It's not a half-bad option if you really want to hit 35 flaw points but have a GM who is strict about only allowing flaws he feels will make a difference in the context of his games.

Fair enough. Just to clarify, I was the GM, the Adept was someone elses. The only reason he survived as long as he did, I think, was because he acted more like the Personal Fixer of the group. He went to the meets, negotiated, and did some legwork, but when it came to the actual run, he left the lifting to the others, unless absolutely necessary. Never got to see him fire his Laser pistol, though. Which was too bad.

Yeah, I just like to stick in my two cents in on this subject since I think Combat Paralysis is about as close as you can get to a benchmark of what a 20 bp negative quality probably should look like. It definitely hurts--the Surprise penalty in particular could even get your runner killed-- but it isn't as outright crippling or redundant as the Infirm/Uneducated/Uncouth line of flaws, either. Really, I probably shouldn't have bothered quoting anyone in particular, but I was in a rush and didn't have a chance to think better of it.